Originally Posted by
tth6133
Competitions are great for consumers, but I wonder how long they're going to last. Would the economics work for JX, for example, relying completely on its own flights at TPE? It doesn't fly to Chinese mainland (other than MFM), unlike the other two Taiwanese carriers, to benefit from the passenger traffic to and from the Chinese mainland.
Chinese are still prohibited from transiting via Taiwan outbound (with exception from 3 cities), meaning they cannot fly PVG-TPE-SEA, but they can fly SEA-TPE-PVG, so Taiwanese airlines are filling the planes today without mainlander passengers.
Originally Posted by
lolstebbo
4 airlines fly SFO-TPE right now with up to 8 flights a day (up to 6 of them being around midnight or 1am westbound, so it's not like there's scheduling variety either), and that hasn't had a noticeable effect on fares as far as I can tell. I don't really know what other benefit for consumers there would be besides sheer capacity (although that hasn't exactly translated into a plethora of award seats either) since the Taiwan-based airlines are all pretty similar experience- and service-wise especially if you're in Y or PE.
LAX/SFO-TPE are among the easiest routes to find J award flights (on CI at least).
Originally Posted by
tth6133
Here's another problem. With the exception of DL flights, all the other flights arrive at SEA in the evenings. By the time passengers clear customs/immigration, there would be few connecting flights that day to go elsewhere in the US.
Taiwanese airlines focus on feeding their Taipei hub to US gateways with large Asian diaspora, they don't need connections to other US cities. Relationship between BR and UA, and between CI and DL aren't close at all.