Originally Posted by
Longboater
LAX is a bloodbath but have you seen SEA recently? SEA-TPE/HKG/MNL/SIN combined is too much capacity for the local market and TPE/HKG have to rely heavily on connections to work. CX is resuming HKG-SEA with timings most favourable to use connections at HKG for CX and connections at SEA for AS. PR's thrice weekly SEA-MNL with the 77W is enough for that market compared to how Delta could step in and fly daily LAX-MNL with PR already flying double daily on that route. The LA Basin and San Diego have over four times the amount of Filipinos than the entire state of Washington. Delta flying daily nonstop on SEA-MNL versus LAX-MNL, is likely to result in worse yields, thus LAX it is. Likely the same conclusion they came to when resuming HKG. SEA-HKG needs connections on both ends to work, hence CX's new times, and DL with no HKG partner wasn't going to be able to make it work. Thus the larger LAX-HKG market is where DL has landed up and rightfully so. Also, remember that LAX is about 10% larger than SEA and Delta is currently the largest carrier, which, given the work going on at LAX, likely won't change over the next few year.
SFO also has a lot of Asian carriers and yet it works really well for UA. Granted, the Bay Area has a larger and more diverse population than Seattle, but the Seattle MSA is actually growing unlike both LA and SF (they're actually shrinking).
My data point is that I've been looking flying to HKG on CX in J and it's about $2k cheaper out of LAX than SFO despite LAX being the larger market. In LAX, DL has to compete with both Asian carriers along with the other two big US based airlines. In SEA, it only has to share with Asian carriers and AS who has a very small fleet of 787s.