Originally Posted by ClipperDelta

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.




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.