Originally Posted by
oldchinahand
Your source of this information please.
I ask as I disagree that the airline is being or is likely to be pushed by the HK government re Saudi flights. There are no direct flights from HK because there is no viable market.
Cairo is an absolute non starter in my opinion although OW partner Royal Air Maroc's home base of Casablanca ( with 60 African destinations) is I feel very possible at some point. Huge untapped Asian tourist market plus good business class transit potential
There has been a lot of public talk about RUH recently and this has been off the back of recent delegation by HK GOV to Saudi Arabia. Whether this materializes into a route launch remains to be seen, but I would suspect they are at the very least looking into it. They once flew to both RUH and JED.
CMN - whilst having connectivity to Africa, is too far West and involves most connections backtracking. DOH offers enough African connections to most major cities, whilst MAD offers some additional connections to West Africa. CX would be better off relying on QR.