Not Cathay news, but relevant to Cathay prices and strategy perhaps. Bloomberg reporting that Hong Kong Airlines is looking at leasing 787s for long-haul routes to North America. They are considering Toronto, LA, Seattle, and Vancouver.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...nd=phx-markets

I know many people would welcome another, cheaper option on direct HK-Toronto flights especially, and could put pressure on CX to come down on those.

On the other hand, arguably even more doubtful CX would come back to Seattle; the amount of direct traffic doesn't seem justifiable. So many Taiwan carriers there now as well. But maybe it proves the market to CX enough to tempt it back to try and push HK Airlines out, or steal some traffic from the Taiwanese that was transiting to HK or could better transit at HK than in Taipei.

last time HX flew A350s to long destinations, they almost vanished. Im sure they would not make the same mistake again.. especially at a time where demand for long flights isn't as high as 2018. it doesn't help the places they suggested have plenty of competition.

I think HX is doing really well regionally though.

also where are the B787s even going to come from? and a lot of pilot training would be needed, so it sounds very unlikely to happen.

SCMP now reporting they are "returning to the long haul market" with a Gold Coast (Aus) route in January:

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...gtype=homepage

"Jeff Sun, the company’s chairman, said Hong Kong Airlines was the first local carrier to bring back the Australian route, signalling the beginning of its return to the long-haul market.'The route launch will mark our first step back into the long-haul market as we are gradually introducing more aircraft to support the expansion of our route network,' he said."

Also reconfirms plans for the North America expansion.

The Bloomberg article just said the 787s would be "used."

Competition with Hong Kong to the Philippines Market
 

you are correct on that end does that also affect Hong Kong to the Philippines Market?

Those routes are a little different because other airlines serve them nonstop (i.e. CX could arguably use its "full service" value proposition to win customers who might otherwise choose 5J). But, that's not really a factor when you are the only kid on the block.

787 is/are coming from Hainan Airline, including 787-8 and 787-9. It will be 787-9 in the first place.
Why now? As HX claim itself as an independent but they're not. All mainland China carriers are facing the issue of they cannot ramp up NA destinations due to a lot of reasons (not just Russia airspace, but more caused by COVID meltdown)

Rumour said HU wants HX to use HKG as a transit spot to carry passengers to NA.

I forget to comment on the HX sidebar yesterday, but I was inclined to say pretty much the exact same thing. With China-Europe heavily saturated and China-North America heavily protected, HU shifting planes to HX (in large part for NA flying) is kind of a no brainer.

It is a really smart move. You can see even Air China has to obey Canada's decision not to fly directly to the canada. (CA997/998 PEK-SHE-YVR)
The only exception are the MU and CZ flight once weekly flight as they "didn't" stop via covid time.

CX is also heavily ramping up their east coast flight as they're monopolying the market. (Just in Greater China speaking, policy-wise, you "cannot" transit via TW unless you got special permit while exiting mainland china)

HX ran OOL-HKG before when they eventually went bust on long-haul services. Everything old is new again.

Yeah but CX back then was aggressive and had an expansionary exec team.

HK airlines might have a good chance considering the current management team is shrinking the widebody fleet till 2028.

They've since honed their business acumen quite a bit, thankfully.

to the detriment of Hong Kong who subsidized them and reduced profits relative to peers.

What a joke! Why do you keep posting misinformation? Is the Boeing 777-9 delay caused by CX management? If Boeing delivered their planes on time, CX would be growing as planned.

Hmmm, so maybe they should look to Aeroflot for managerial inspiration?

If CX did not toss out their 777 300 er (11 already) and another 9 leaving.
and also ordered more A350 they would have been fine.
Now no expansion to 2027.