if it wasnt obvious, scmp clearly loathes CX and wants it gone for some reason. they always make things unnecessarily political and negative.

considering this is such a long route and has to fly past russia (likely), plus AA doesn't care at all about asia and is in big trouble anyway, it makes sense for AA to try to persuade CX to come to DFW. they might have done it with fiji airways and some others as well.

Why do you feel the bnr spin is negative? If it helps them get a subsidy from Zhongnanhai, all the better.:D

Absolutely it was in part to pre-empt Starlux's rumblings about adding DFW and joining OneWorld: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/tai.../18/2003823969

For its part OneWorld left room for CX to strengthen its own role, perhaps with the suggestion that CX should deepen ties with existing partners:
https://www.hk01.com/%E8%B2%A1%E7%B6...9C%B0%E5%8D%80

Truth be told, DFW is more of a tech/auto hub suited for TYO/NGO, TPE, SIN, and Penang. But kudos to CX for starting it. It may well stick!

For BRI/OBOR, MEX/GDL would have been better. DFW is fine since anyone important enough probably has VWP/B1-B2 already. But mainlanders doing anything remotely sensitive will not forgot the Meng incident in YVR (not even in the US) in transit to MEX.

TIJ would be interesting for capturing SAN/LAX overflow... I'm always surprised CI doesn't go there.

I guess this means we won't see HKG-MIA!

Interesting, that HK01 article suggests that CX's position within OneWorld is as strong or even stronger than ever. The total opposite of speculation not too long ago that CX would leave OW and join *A which was itself driven by speculation that AirChina would take majority ownership of CX (of which rumours/speculation have totally died down).

Glad that CX is initiating new routes, however, what about previous resumptions?

FCO, ADL, LGW, BRU (personal preference for this one), EWR, CPT etc

The speculation of CX defecting to OW comes up as often as HKG depegging HKD from USD!

Maybe they will come back after CX solves its aircraft shortage...

European routes can be hard to do since ME3's lower cost base makes it hard to capture transfer traffic.

High EMEA O&D ports to HKG might be LGW (though LHR is overcapacity with many airlines not just CX) and surprisingly southern Europe, just like the Mediterranean transatlantic boom. Hopefully one day it will be safe enough to resume TLV. Is SAS never comes back, then CPH makes a lot of sense (not sure how the LH-CX JV works).

Better to add AU where their outbound is strong and OW base is substantial. ADL, and even places like CBR, WSI, DRW (321neo) not covered under the bilateral max cap of 70.

FCO, ADL, SEA and IAD please if you're reading this CX - even if IAD is a stretch.

Secondary EU/US ports are likelier to return if mainland (subsidized) overcapacity makes the core ports like LAX/SFO harder to keep up, which were the initial conditions in 2016-2018.

The remaining viable US ports are past destinations IAD/EWR/SEA and UA hub IAH (not to mention secondary Canadian like YYC/YUL where there is probably some market to be had).

Back when I almost moved to Miami just before the pandemic, there was speculation there of being a destination because of all of Swire's property investments in the area and the airport/business community actively scouting Asian connections. A "Chinese" airline would probably be less welcome by Florida Republicans now.

I don't know how transferring is there but some mentioned MEX for the possibility of those who wanted to avoid the US (and not just for geopolitical reasons - the whole thing with luggage and immigration during international US airport transfers is so annoying.)

Beyond Mexico, range becomes an issue so one would have to imagine fifth freedom routes.

Why didn't they increase the bilateral cap? Especially given that Australia already has an open skies agreement with mainland China

It's actually 4D chess and misdirection, CX is in fact about to join SkyTeam :P

The EU (plus UK, Switzerland, and other E. Europe) and US (plus Canada) are very different wrt China flying. In the case of the former, China was able to get individual states (e.g. France, Germany, Netherlands) to deal with it on a bilateral basis. Plus, you have the BNR flights, which are presumably subsidized on both ends (e.g. from China and Hungary). The short of it is that Chinese airlines have blanketed the continent at will, and European carriers have been a hard time competing. Personally, I have no problem with that; if China wants people to visit and/or its airlines want to put their planes to better use than flying back and forth between Beijing and Shanghai, more the power to them.

The US, on the other hand, has been highly protectionistic about its bilateral air services agreement with China ever since the 5 ones were retired. So, on the Chinese side, you have 50 slot pairs spread among ~7 airlines. As long as they can reap handsome profits by flying to LAX, that's the way they're going to play it.

Hong Kong is not covered by the bilateral, so CX could theoretically launch more interesting routes, and even overlfy Russia (like it does with its JFK flights), but that doing so would entail poking a lot of bears that are currently at peace (sort of). I must say that I'm impressed by the DFW move, though. I doubt that one will overfly Russia, and AA is presumably giving it some political cover anyway. The checkmate to JX angle didn't even occur to me until you guys brought it up...makes sense.

you have to remember that for the sinsino phobic nations Cathay and Swire are palatable because they are British.

So I doubt Florida Republicans will have an issue

Connections of CX899 and CX897 together with CX843 EWR/JFK/DFW-MNL/CEB via HKG
 

Spot on there and for the EWR flight CX899 it leaves EWR at 1am arrive HKG 5:30am making it arrive 5 min before CX843 JFK-HKG 5:35 am if EWR-HKG is resumed. Both are timed for CX907 HKG-MNL T3 CX921 HKG-CEB together with CX897 DFW-HKG.