DWFI

It will be a cold, cold day in hell before AA starts IAH-HKG. UA has a megahub in IAH and decided they couldn't make it work - what reason does AA have to do so?

I agree, LAX-HKG would be compelling and would be a strategic move for AA if they are serious about LAX.

I'm curious as to your definition of "success". DFW-HKG is loss-making at the moment - management has said as much.

scnzzz

I think longboater may have been referring to CX starting IAH-HKG, not AA

Longboater

I meant CX doing IAH-HKG. Probably a long time before we see a IAH-HKG nonstop for multiple reasons. Management has said DFW-HKG is the most premium yielding market they operate in the Pacific, ok not saying much but it has better yields than DFW-NRT. (When Doug Parker says that F is usually a sell out on the flight and is an example of a route than can support F, that's saying plenty.)

I suspect they could continue to raise prices in F/J to improve yields. Without looking at the numbers and from what we on this board have seen on the upgrade lists, the biggest problem of this flight is not really whether AA can get sell seats upfront at high prices but rather the length of the flight. As its been reported several times in multiple threads on this forum, AA has had to block seats particularly in the winter and on several of occasions had to ask volunteers in Y to be booted off. AA's premium heavy 77W is pushed to its limits west bound. Unfortunately, this problem AA has zero control over but, if AA went bold and decided to launch LAX-HKG, the 77W could easily be filled up and even carry a full belly of cargo most of the year.

JonNYC

Very respectfully, the "data" you're basing your assumptions, conclusions and theories on are not data. Or anything even _resembling_ data.

cmd320

I would argue that CX doesn't really need to fly to Texas at all. I agree that IAH would be the likely target since AA already has DFW locked down, but realistically it isn't going to happen. IAH-HKG sounds more like something UA should fly with a 787 or something. It's easy enough to just transfer in LAX or SFO to get on CX.

I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make with high-spend west coast clients. Why would they backtrack to DFW to just fly on AA rather than flying on CX? The AAdvantage benefits are largely the same, CX offers a better hard product in each cabin except for J where it's identical, and CX offers a soft product on a level that cannot even be compared with AA. What exactly would AA be bringing to the table? Lower fares? Possibly, but a brief look at prices on CX doesn't show anything abnormally overpriced compared with other similar markets, and I would have trouble believing that AA has a far superior cost structure and could sustainably undercut on price. Then again, if they can I suppose it could cater to a lower fare type of clientele. Whether or not that could justify such a flight remains to be seen.

A comparison of AA going up against CX to HKG and AA competing with DL, MU, and UA to PVG is pretty laughable. While MU is improving, they still have some refining to do before they become a serious transpacific competitor on the level of CX, SQ, OZ, JL, NH, etc. AA, DL, and UA survive in that market because there isn't any clearly superior option.

I would be very cautious about the smoke that comes blowing out of DP. Remember, this is the group that continually stated TLV was one of the best performing routes in the system, only to later find out that it had been hemmorhaging money for 6 years...

DWFI

Oops.
Right, CX is definitely the better candidate to start IAH but they have bigger fish to fry right now.

I'd expect IAD, SEA, and MIA (via YYC or YEG) to be launched before IAH or anything else is considered. Especially with the oil economy where it is now.

Re: HKG profitability, this is the last public comment that Parker/Kirby have made. This is the Feb 2015 earnings call in response to a question about the performance of AA's Asian routes.

GNRMatt

A correction is needed here. Doug Parker and the US Airways executive board never publicly declared PHL-TLV was one of the best performing routes in the system. This is hearsay that has come from the likes of FA's and others. There has never been any statements by US Airways indicating this to be true. We need to stop perpetuating false information. If you have something that contradicts this, please post a link (and not to just what some random person on FT said).

TravellingSalesman

A bit confused about this one: if oil makes IAH less viable, why would they go to YYC or YEG?

DWFI

CX has publicly stated that they really want to fly to Miami.
HKG-MIA is 8990 miles which would make this the longest flight in the world by far - 400 miles longer than EK's DXB-PTY service.

Consequently the rumor is that CX intends to run it as a 1 stop. Since CX cannot operate with 5th freedom traffic within the US (it could fly, say, HKG-SEA-MIA but could not take up local traffic on SEA-MIA), it generally makes more sense to have the stop in Canada.

Speculation is that YYC or YEG is the right choice since neither of those 2 cities have MIA service and YEG seems to be the favorite since it has no Asian service at all (but a decent volume of traffic).

CX will not be depending on oil traffic to buy the front cabins on this routing, whereas to IAH they would absolutely need to have that.

SQ is getting absolutely hammered on its IAH-DME-SIN service right now. I'm surprised that they haven't cut it.

The bottom line is that CX (and Ivan Chu, who IMO is brilliant) is realizing that they can't simply run their old strategy of serving 3 cities in North America and 4 in Europe and expect to get away with it. As Air China, China Southern, and China Eastern deploy capacity of epic proportions to those key cities, it is wiping out CX's margins since they are simply undercutting CX in all of its bread and butter markets. As a result, I think CX has realized it has to get creative - look at the recent additions in North America (BOS, EWR, and more to come) and Europe (ZRH, DUS, MAN, MAD, and TLV/BCN/CPH/LGW in the pipeline). This is a massive amount of new destinations for CX in an extremely compact timeframe, who prior to these destinations opened probably 1 new longhaul route in 4 years, and a reflection of this strategy.

rasheed

I believe any JV potential with EY would create the potential for EQM/EQP which would be very exciting. I don't know if anyone follows QR from an accural perspective, but most of the Economy fares they are selling in the US are in the .25 EQM/RDM bucket. CX is no better, but the potential to get closer to 100 percent accrual especially if the AA AUH route is priced comparatively is a big deal.

Sadly, there would be no value for the West Coast folks to take an extra stop on a 20 hours journey (including the connecting flight at AUH) to go via DFW. Well, I am sure some would, it just doesn't make sense for me.

Rasheed

scnzzz

(my bold)

I often find that on CX routes, the AA codeshare that earns full EQM is usually in inventory that also earns 1 EQP/EQM - in other words, even if deep discount is available from CX on their own code, that won't be available as the AA codeshare - only as the CX prime.

One would presume that were EY/AA to enter such a codeshare, AA may well restrict the inventory on which codeshare is permitted to the higher Y buckets and up.

But that's just IME.

Piedmont767

Apparently the 2 A330s from PHLTLV are being transferred to MIA, does anyone know if this is true?

Patriots

For MIA-TLV or just to move them in general?

Piedmont767

Move them in general.

sagechan

General speculation has been the 330s/767s would probably swap PHL/MIA to match the peak Europe/South American seasons. Perhaps having freed up a few frames from TLV a limited start to that.