Originally Posted by
TravellingChris
The new flights are interesting, though I'm doubtful how sustainable they are. Delta and ANA already fly SEA-HND, JAL does SEA-NRT. Korean and Asiana both fly SEA-ICN, as does Delta. (Yes, KE is taking over OZ but isn't Air Premia going to be taking over some of the combined company's transpacific services in order to alleviate competition concerns in return for U.S. government approval of the deal? So there will likely still be two Korea-based competitors on the SEA-ICN route, plus Delta, in addition to AS.)
SEA-NRT is probably more defensible because there is a local Oneworld partner at the other end.
I do wonder about all the airlines dumping transpacific capacity into SEA. There are four carriers trying to make a go of Seattle-Taipei, which is utter insanity, and now both Seattle-Tokyo and Seattle-Incheon will have four each. I'd suggest only Tokyo could probably support four over the long term.
I have very similar concerns. Although I believe SEA-NRT/ICN will be fine. They won't be cash cow routes but I think AS can compete. Most NA airlines are able to sustain these routes from smaller hubs than seattle.
SEA-TPE seems way oversupplied with seats. UA and AA have been very slow to reinstate HKG flights, continually pushing out reinstatement dates or scrapping them completely which I interpret to mean soft demand. A significant percentage of the NA expat community has left and not returned, and many local HKers with NA ties have left HK. I believe HKG-SEA is 1 of 2 NA routes CX still hasn't reinstated, even with a partner in AS that they could pass connecting passengers on to. DL had dropped it for poor performance a couple years before covid and I would assume the economics are worse now than they were then (but in fairness, they didn't have a partner in CX to pass traffic on). If you look at where the majors are adding capacity, it's primarily domestically, Central America/Caribbean, and to Europe. UA is the only one who has much going on in the APAC region, and even they have cut back on their ANZ seat dumping. The same economic environment that caused HA to struggle with their APAC routes I don't think gets magically fixed by painting chester on the planes and moving them to SEA from HNL. Demand from Asia is still very much depressed due to the strong dollar and additional expenses from fuel and russian airspace detours, especially with labor costs for US airlines significantly higher than in their Asian counterparts. While traffic between Asia and specifically Europe has rebounded much more than between NA and Asia, it's primarily due to non-European carriers. Virgin, BA, and AY have significantly cut capacity to Asia.