Originally Posted by
SJC ORD LDR
SFO also has a lot of Asian carriers and yet it words 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).
The Bay Area has more corporates willing to shell out the big bucks for up front travel than either SEA or LAX; that’s what’s driving UA’s success there.
Originally Posted by
SJC ORD LDR
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.
In the case of HKG, SFO is actually the biggest US market. That plus the corporate element I mentioned above is what drives the premium in fares compared to LAX or SEA. But Delta can’t run SFO-HKG so LAX is the next best option; SEA-HKG has already been tried and failed, and the market dynamics have not changed significantly since then that would indicate Delta would succeed with SEA-HKG this time round.
For MNL, the largest local US market is LAX (covering both LAX and SAN); in fact, UA’s SFO-MNL currently has a material number of connecting pax every night from LAX. Here Delta can actually take some of that traffic from UA if it were to start LAX-MNL. In addition, there is only one competitor in the nonstop LAX-MNL market they would have to deal with- the rather mediocre PR.
SEA is actually more suited for Northern Asia markets in terms of market size. Japan and surprisingly China are strong local markets for SEA.