So... how's BOS doing?
 

Anyone can direct me to a website or knows generally how BOS is doing? Out of curiosity.... is it premium heavy but not Y heavy, or vice-versa, or doing very well?

Thanks

ExpertFlyer?

These days I do fake booking at CX to check so as there's no more free GDS service (even with delayed data...)

Ok thanks, I'll set up monitoring on ExpertFlyer

Was on 812 in J last night and had a really lovely flight. Hard to tell about Y from up in the mini cabin and didn't wander back. But J was full up and Y looked busy enough on boarding (but apparently not enough for op-ups to push up Js to fill the empty F seats alas!). Excellent crew on a spit and polish 77W. Took off to a stunning sunset over China and landed to a rare and spectacular blue moon over the New England coast.

Clearly this great new service is going to live or die on O&D traffic. Very few if any connections available at that arrival time, especially given Logan's glacial baggage handling and gate management (we were 20 minutes early but gave that and more back waiting for a BA 747 to push back so we could have a gate).

Massport has taken Logan truly global now, and good for them, but shouldn't they have built a new international terminal first? BOS Term E is dreadful on every dimension, departing and arriving. Try spending half a summer in Asia, mostly through HKG and SIN, but even at such places as DPS and HAN. Then return to BOS as one of your lifelong home airports, and see how you feel about the state of American industry and governance. It's always good to be home but...

O&D on the Boston end, but remember it's perfectly timed for connections to and from HKG. It's by no means just about BOS-HKG traffic.

Where in the world would they put it?

Speaking as someone for whom BOS was a home airport for quite some time as well, they simply don't have the space.

What's wrong with terminal E? :confused:

Not enough gates for the volume of afternoon and evening international traffic, lack of sufficient dual jetways for large aircraft, dreary and mostly inadequate J class lounges buried deep in the terminal, inadequate dining and shopping options and seating areas in the terminal departures area, slow baggage handling with flights doubled up on carousels. In short, lack of most of everything that good international airports have these days, unless your benchmark is the JFKs of the world.

How is customs for someone with Global Entry? Easy?

Does BOS ground staff escort DMs through security?

I may try it out sometimes

Which makes sense. It's about getting people to/from BOS. For probably anywhere else, they can fly via JFK, ORD or even YYZ.

Customs is quite easy with GE. The CX flight arrives late fortunately, but during the afternoon it can get very backed up in the regular line, so make sure you have GE for sure.

I'm flying BOS-HKG on 811 in October - any news on the BA Lounge getting their alcohol license enhanced to serve past 10 PM (or was it 11 PM?)?

i think it's laughable to see you compare BOS with HKG/SIN or even DPS...not even remotely in the same category, given ratio of domestic:intl traffic, and that all of the growth outside of basic TATLs (QR/EK/JL/HU/CX) has all been in the last 5 years. not sure how you could expect overnight massport expansion for a fairly recent development (especially given the politics with east boston). if it wasn't for the 787 and massive ME3 expansion, none of this would have really been in the cards IMO. if you want a better example of exemplary american industry/governance and aviation, check out PIT, STL, SJC, or even RDU :p


anyways, i digress, to actually answer OPs question, I have been religiously looking at loads on CX 812 during July/August on Expertflyer (trying to correlate at what point F seats open up, etc). Y has been 0'ed out when I was looking T-14 to T-28 for at least half of July and most of August...CX must be having a good summer, I would think it's a little early for college kids to come back, maybe it's HKG holiday? Decent amount of J/F availability, not a route I would expect there to be F on, but should be interesting to see if they can fill them without AA mileage redemptions.

So... how's BOS doing?
 

Surely the answer is that we can't know how it's doing? The mere fact that it's full doesn't tell us much without knowing at what prices -- my first question is whether we'd still be seeing people flying on promotional fares that were offered when the route was new.

When will this flight go daily?

CX doesn't have enough 77Hs at the moment as far as i know

CX already received all the 77W's they had on order. I think the increase in BOS service and any other expansion will only take place once the A350's and free up some 77W's by taking over some of their European routes.

Are you sure this is accurate? I don't know the #s, but anecdotally it seems I'm seeing a lot more spare 77Ws laying around (both 77H and 77G) than before, either sitting on the tarmac doing nothing or regularly filling in on longer regional routes that they used to appear on more sparingly, like ICN and CGK. I've also seen 77H going to KHH last month. And it seems like the chance of getting 77H to "regular" short haul destinations like TPE, MNL, SGN or CEB have also increased.

I guess the flipside is the majority of 77W departures depart around midnight. And of course an even larger % of them arrive HKG in the early morning. So presumably the supply looks like this:

8am onwards: Overwhelming majority of 77W arrivals from everywhere.
8am to 4pm: Smattering of 77W longhaul departures throughout day (LHR, LAX, ORD, SFO, JFK, CDG, SYD)
4pm to 7pm: More LH departures to North America (LAX, SFO, BOS, JFK, EWR, YYZ, YVR)
Midnight: Largest % of LH departures, to everywhere.

I would love to know if anyone (pilot? working at CX? industry?) actually knows the #s.

Regarding BOS, I think the biggest issue are loads. Premium cabins don't seem to be totally filled with cash pax, which I imagine weighs on yields.

Could that be remedied by a reconfiguration of the cabin?
Also, the world economy is not exactly booming. Premium cabin demand might reflect that.

All the CX 777 departures from HKG for Monday, November 23, 2015 by hour of day.

nah, this is a BOS specific issue. I spoke with a financial analyst covering CX who seems to think the BOS premium yields are very underwhelming.

CX indeed has a "less premium" 77W (called "77G") with J, PEY and Y only, but that's kinda a double edged sword due to a lot more seats...340 total versus 275 on 77H. And second, Cathay has less slack in their 77G fleet (20) I believe than the 77H fleet (33). SYD now goes 2x daily with 77G (up from 0 a year ago), and apparently AKL will get 77G in an interim period before the A350s arrive. (Is this still happening btw?)

Hopefully BOS goes daily, maybe they'll swap an A350 there next year and go 7x weekly. I hope that's viable because I know I appreciate the additional destinations in North America.

The question is why?

Just a guess, but I am not sure where the consistent premium class demand would come from? Nor imho does BOS serve as primary transit hub for international travel at least compared to JFK/LAX/other.

On the plus side, there may be significant seasonal demand based on the academic calendars for the universities and prep schools. However, I suppose those peak times may also consist mostly of one-way traffic.

ha, i don't know. I think the suspicions are either the 77W is just too big a plane for what the BOS premium market can handle, or perhaps the market is still ramping up and it will be there in 3-6 months' time. I suspect it's probably the former.

CX has seen success putting the 77G (more dense 77W) on heavy routes like SFO and EWR, and I imagine they've considered it for BOS. But it's definitely a doubled edged sword, because that decision needs to ensure the additional seat capacity - 65 seats more on 77G vs 77H - can be filled, primarily with economy pax. The operating leverage of that decision works both ways and if you can't fill it full on a reasonable yield for such a long route the economics go south fast. My suspicion for BOS is that economy demand is going to be volatile in-line with school seasonality, and on many parts of the year won't be able to handle 340 seats daily to/from HKG.

For a year or two when BOS was rumored as a destination, our brilliant amateur analysis in these FT forums was we always assumed it'd be an A350 destination;). I believe CX mgmt is even on the record years ago as saying as much. So we thought it wouldn't be until 2016 at least, when the A350s started arriving. Oops.

Lastly....I have no clue about BOS as a cargo destination. CX has a large cargo division and one reason they bought so many 77Ws is the cargo capacity in the belly. Flights to/from LAX, SFO and JFK have significant amounts of cargo demand. And someone at CX is on the record talking about EWR belly cargo as well. I have no idea anything about BOS as a cargo hub but it could be a wildcard. Perhaps 77W was launched to BOS early because it's a compelling cargo destination too. Or perhaps BOS sucks for cargo. I have no clue.

Anecdotal, to be sure, but I'm unlikely to book BOS again. Maybe BOS-HKG, but certainly not HKG-BOS.

I flew the BOS-HKG flight last month, and was scheduled to do it round-trip until I realized that the return flight leaves you all but stranded in Boston for the night. There are very few connecting flights that leave after the arrival of the CX flight, especially if you consider you need to clear customs, and also need a few hours for checked bags to transfer. So flying to BOS will likely result in an overnight stay... and most of the hotels near the airport are pricey.

Flying BOS-HKG was OK. Arrive in HK in the morning, use the arrival lounge, and good to go.

My point is that I wonder if the arrival time and the lack of connecting flights impacts utilization?

I think BOS is more of a destination, not a connection point for CX. Anyone who wants to connect to a smaller city probably flies HKG-JFK-X.

Yeah, the connecting routes are more through JFK/LAX/ORD, or DFW on AA directly from HKG. If you're flying HKG-BOS, you're either originating in HKG or connecting in HKG from elsewhere, not many options for connecting after BOS.

In terms of financial industry, nearly all the Boston funds have someone local in Hong Kong now, so less need to make regular (quarterly) trips to HK/China. I would think the next biggest demand is students and their parents, so it'll be a seasonal market.

Are the ground staff Swissport?

Yes. Confirmed when I traveled BOS-HKG last December.

BOS was increasing to 5x weekly sometime around now. Anyone know what date it is and how CX is doing now 1-year in on the route? I'd read the premium cabins were selling much better than expected. Would love to hear from anyone with more info.

Selling for cash or miles?

Cash. Seems pretty tough to find J of F award tickets to/from BOS outside of 5-7 days before flight. But it seems you already knew that - https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...y-bos-hkg.html

If the flights are doing well, perhaps it can go daily.

Its going daily as of 3.26.2017 http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/...as-of-01sep16/

Really thrilled to hear this. Pretty soon after BOS launched, i came to realize how darn convenient if was for me from a selfish perspective. (I'm a traveler based in HK with frequent North America trips). Although I have more meetings in NY during US trips, I frequently have a day in Boston. Prior I'd usually round-trip from NY or put Boston in the middle and fly ex-Logan to another US city after meetings were over. CX service means I can terminate a US trip in Boston. And now with daily it means I don't have to be cute and worry which day.

Absolutely love the late night departures because it means a completely full day of meetings plus an extended business dinner, plus even an extra drinks if necessary before going to the airport.

I guess CX has picked up the yields. Very glad to see it.

I think that people who aren't from Boston don't realize the extent to which everyone believes him/herself to be a first line individual stakeholder in every decision. Witness the mess which resulted in Boston withdrawing from a bid to host the Olympics and the current nonsense of one of the small town mayors (Joe Curtatone from Somerville) trying to shake down Steve Wynn, even after problems with the city of Boston were resolved. Complete nonsense.

As far as availability only showing up in the week or so before departure ex-BOS, that's not at all unusual for CX. In fact, I'd say that it's SOP.

As North America continues to strengthen, I think its becoming inevitable that the 777X order will be increased as we near EIS. Current order is 25 but they'll need more to match up with they're plan of using them to strengthen NA routes. JFK, YVR & LAX will see them for sure and I'd imagine BOS, YYZ, SFO & ORD are likely plus LHR in Europe. The A351 doesn't have the payload capability on those longer sectors that CX needs. I think we'll see that aircraft takeover most of the European routes such as AMS, FRA & possibly even CDG. Australia will likely be a tossup between A359 and A351.

^