Relevant to this convo maybe that HX has now confirmed its Vancouver route will begin Jan. 18:
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...gtype=homepage

It will be interesting to see if HX’s A330-300s can operate the YVR-HKG route with a full passenger and cargo load, especially considering the strong headwinds typically encountered over the Pacific during the winter months.

Rumour said YVR-HKG has to reduce 10% pax

October 2024 traffic figures posted yesterday. Comparing Oct 2018 (CX & KA) and Oct 2024 (CX only), passengers flown as follows:
- Europe: 2.41M vs 1.65M (68% recovery)
- Americas: 2.84M vs 2.30M (81% recovery)
- Oceania: 1.30M vs 1.21M (93% recovery)

Regional traffic is difficult to compare since UO is not included in the 2024 numbers. But long-haul wise, it's clear the region with the worst recovery (by far) is Europe.
European carriers have been struggling in the Chinese market – BA and LH have stopped flying to Beijing, VS and SAS have stopped flying to Shanghai – citing weakened business travel and intense competition from Mainland carriers who can overfly Russia. LH also has not resumed HKG-MUC service, which was an A388 service pre-Covid. As we all know, CX doesn't overfly Russia to Europe, and is therefore also at a disadvantage compared to Mainland carriers.

Is all the missing traffic really being taken by Mainland carriers? My guess is no, and that VFR and student travel represents a far greater share of traffic on flights to Canada/America/Australia than on flights to (continental) Europe, although this is mainly anecdotal. I think we could see flights to LGW, DUB, and FCO returning. An LGW service could keep HX out of the European market entirely (I can't imagine them paying for an LHR slot pair). DUB I believe was doing well (much better than BRU, DUS, and CPH at least), and FCO could probably come back as a seasonal flight in the last stages of the recovery. I don't see any other expansion in the European market coming, apart from incremental frequency additions to destinations like MAD and BCN.

Assuming we can replace the "all" with a slightly less absolute qualifier, my guess is "yes" because they've successfully managed to flood the market with enough to capacity to set baseline prices low enough to render Europe-China flying pointless for non-Chinese carriers. Even if they can pull enough money out Shanghai to stay above water, other pastures are far more lucrative.

At the same time, Chinese carriers hitting Europe hard makes a lot sense. 1. They are under pressure (much of it in the form of incentives, mind you) to play their part in facilitating inbound tourism and, separately, fly to the "road" countries. 2. The bilaterals CAAC scored with individual (i.e no EU bloc here) European countries are incredibly favorable, whereas the opposite has been the case with the US and, until recently even moreso, Canada. 3. They need to deploy their resources somewhere.

This also explains why CX has gone so much heavier on NA than Europe. They can fly to JFK 21 times per week v 8x/week split among four different Chinese airlines. Of course that is more prudent than swimming in the bloodbath on the other side.

Regarding HK to Europe, there is a not totally unrealistic scenario that the Ukraine war ends in 2025 (given who's going to be in the US White House) and Russian airspace is once again open to all airlines. In which case, CX and the European carriers would no longer be at a disadvantage to the Mainland Chinese carriers. That could be a catalyst for more routes and not just for CX.

Milan route increases to 1 daily from 30 march 2025

CX is adding new flights to NKG (Nanjing, China) starting from March 30th, 2025. The new schedule is the following:

CX304 HKG-NKG 1925-2205
CX305 NKG-HKG 0800-1040

It provides the much-needed evening arrival into NKG and a morning departure from NKG.

I still find it funny that the CX of today is still smaller than CX/KA of 2010.

How far down has HK fallen.

And with no net gain in aircraft till 2027, I am not sure where people are expecting all these new routes to come from.

I don't expect pre covid numbers to be hit till 2030.

Good for the Taiwanese, Chinese and SQ I guess.

Citation(s), please.

30 June 2010 passenger fleet for CX + KA: 133 aircraft (128 CX total - 25 CX freighters + 30 KA total)

30 June 2024 passenger fleet for CX: 158 aircraft (178 CX total - 20 CX freighters). This excludes UO’s fleet of 36.

2010 interim report: https://www.cathaypacific.com/conten...-report_en.pdf
2024 interim report: https://www.cathaypacific.com/conten..._report_en.pdf

Some passenger data for HKG from two potential routes that have been mentioned here before that are seen as major unserved ones from the perspective of the other airports. Grain of salt, of course, because a nonstop direct flight can catalyze more demand, and 2023 was not the best year for data given HK was just reopening.

GVA - 26,252 pax/year total (June 2023 - June 2024) - https://airserviceone.com/unlocking-...north-america/
CPH - 10,313/year departing for HKG (2023) - https://www.cph.dk/en/cph-business/a...rved_dest_2023

I would be so so surprised if they restart CPH anytime soon. As much as I like Copenhagen it only lasted for 6 months when they tried in 2018 and they were able to use Russian airspace.

While SK isn't competing on this route now I kinda doubt it was a main reason for the poor performance.

Quite surprising that HK is listed as top 1 unserved Asia destination for CPH departure. But still the demand is not high, and avoiding Russian airspace cause much more disruptions to Nordic countries.

One typical thing is if a destination has been served by a direct/nonstop in the recent past, it will tend to be one of the unserved routes that still has the most passengers.

Another thing is that CPH already has departures to a number of major Asian cities including Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, and Bangkok (albeit seasonal). Maybe surprising Seoul isn't also on the list for having major unserved demand but two Vietnamese cities plus Manila are.