In the Cairns Post there are details of what helped lure CX back there. Subsidies involved but also other things:



https://www.cairnspost.com.au/subscr...s&mode=premium

Interestingly despite announcements I can't find any corroboration that Adelaide has been scheduled, nor the Perth/Brisbane or Europe winter capacity boosts, from Aeroroutes, which is usually pretty comprehensive. The Cairns scheduling seems confirmed though.

CX resumed service to another Mainland China city - Ningbo NGB. Starting from August 1, 4 weekly flights will be reinstated operated by A321neo. HK Express also operates one daily flight to this city.

i am utterly in disbelief in the pace CX has been adding or resuming flights to at least 15 destinations, after a lot of months of silence.

With not a lot of foriegn airlines increasing service to HK recently, the CX group would just get even more market share, which is nice.

CX has been making good progress in staffing across the board.

Another service increase, this one official enough to have been picked up by Aeroroutes - Johannesburg to 4x weekly by 4 Jan 2025:

https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/240628-cx1q25jnb

I'm just happy that they have started to realise they need to up their game in terms of flights. I did notice that some intra-Asian routes will have fewer flights though...Shanghai is back to 6 daily and Taipei did receive some flight cuts (even though they were gonna be empty anyways)

Makes sense as staffing ramps up.

A short-haul intra-Asian flight could turn around several times a day. With limited staffing, more of these flights could be run to help reestablish market share. With more staff more resources can be devoted to longer hauls, and some shorter routes cut back where the demand doesn't justify it.

Interesting re: demand into the mainland, Qantas is canceling its only flights there (Sydney to Shanghai). They can only fill half their A330s:

https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other...vertelemetry=1

On the positive side for CX it's more market share on this route, split with SQ, CI, CZ, and maybe Garuda. But bad news for feeding into the mainland in general.

are the 'increased' NW24 schedules only temporary? For example the BNE and CNS increased flights are not even loaded for NS25 schedule from Apr25 onwards. I'm counting these are just simply not yet loaded.

Is this due to pricing? It can't be due to visa issues as I understand Australia has just been added to the visa-free programme for 15 day visits to the PRC.

its because they cant compete with the Chinese airlines who do have low pricing, and much more frequency and better planes (a350 or b787 most of the time) there.

not to mention I think Chinese enjoy taking domestic airlines much more than qantas.

i think the austrailans use CX to mainland the most.

It's not uncommon for airlines, especially those that operate in dynamic markets, to only load one season at a time several time several months before the season starts. That having been said, there is typically a significant amount of continuity between seasons.

I'll respond to this in 2 parts:

1. HKG-SHA is a high frequency market that I know well, so I can comment on it, but it's representative of many other regional routes
-9C and UO have effectively set the price floor at about USD 100 each way
-MU and CX fly nicer planes and offer better service, so they can command higher prices, but not 5x as much
-While I do choose CX when the fares are reasonable, I'm okay with all flights on the route
-If/when CX reduces frequencies, I assume it will keep the best ones

2. Mainland-Australia
-I don't know many people who prefer CZ or MF to CX or QF, but $300 is obviously more appealing than $1000
-anyone who wants to fly PVG-SYD nonstop will now have to succumb to MU's monopoly
-or, they can save a little money and fly one stop on a good foreign airline... or a lot of money if they're okay with other PRC airlines or lesser foreign airlines

In both cases, the markets look pretty healthy to me and are behaving more or less like I would expect them to. CX isn't going to abandon either, but they don't exactly deserve to be critical focus items.

I wanted to fly Qantas with my family in J, I was flexible on dates, nothing below 4000$ no matter of the date you choose, at between 2000$ to 3000$ they could have get much more market, but they have been inflexible on their pricing and you can fly with CX for about 2000$ in J with a quick stop in HK

I assumed business demand was down between Australia and the mainland. Links have recently been rekindled but it will probably take time to come back to what it was (the visa policy shift was very recent - like last week!), if ever, and the recent strains plus Shanghai not quite recovering from Covid may have had an impact.

I'm not sure this route is as healthy as claimed if it couldn't sustain the Qantas direct link as before.

All that said, part of the problem might be Qantas, which has been seen as not as good as it was according to a lot of comments I've seen from Australians. So the logic might be not worth shelling out for.

CNS is seasonal only for 15 weeks.

as for BNE, wait for CX to finalized their schedule. They only started to confirm their NW24 schedule these few weeks.