Originally Posted by TravellingChris

Yes AC knows the Canadian government has the carrier's back. Remember a number of years ago during the Harper government when Emirates and Etihad wanted to increase service to Canada and were denied? There was a spat with the UAE and Canada was booted out of the Emirati defense facilities it was using to supply the mission in Afghanistan.

It's understandable that CX would want more slots and I would welcome the competition, but it's likely both Ottawa and AC are worried about the effect that extra capacity would have on the sustainability of AC's Far East routes, particularly the services to Singapore and Bangkok. Canadian authorities value direct links and Cathay could siphon off a lot of onward traffic by routing it through their HKG hub. I would be curious what percentage of AC passengers to those two destinations are connecting elsewhere in SE Asia, almost certainly to destinations to which CX already flies from HKG.