UO is going exactly what CX wants.
Protecting CX from foreign cheaper airlines and kicking them out of the market.

Curious which routes is UO dumping capacity to the extent that it's forcing foreign airlines to retreat?

They've traditionally been heavily focused on Japan, and the Japanese carriers have little interest in Hong Kong over the years, even before COVID. They can't even match CX from their biggest cities, let alone think of connecting from the secondary ones that UO/HX/Greater Bay are targeting now.

I also don't think the recent slew of new routes to China are stopping Chinese airlines either.

Are SE Asian LCCs such as AirAsia and Vietjet scaling back HK?

for UO, to name a few: DAD, PEN, HKT, PUS, CJU, PQC (not suprised if viet jet leaves soon)

plus quite a few routes from CX

I don’t think foreign cheap airlines fly from these secondary cities. One key thing that differentiates AirAsia and UO is the availability of Halal meals onboard. They cater to different profiles. The only thing is Vietnamese and Koreans. I don’t see lots of Vietnamese in HK and I also don’t think it’s a major air traffic pair.

Korean? It’s ultra competitive with lots of LCCs and Japan airlines has low interest in HK.

Vietnamese are on the increase. The major issue has been visas. Some in the HK government still have bad memories of the Vietnamese refugee crisis, but this is fading as there is a priority to open up to ASEAN. The visa rules for Vietnamese have already been loosened somewhat and there's probably more to come, so it's going to be a growth area.

Vietnam is also not willing to reciprocate and continues to impose visas on HKers as well as a lot more developed countries compared to Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. They won't be able to grow their inbound visit numbers unless they loosen that up then I'll expect a huge boom from HK to their cities.

You are right I reckon. The Southeast Asia market has tons of potential. Take a look at this: according to the Hong Kong Government's report on visitor arrivals by region, the number of South and Southeast Asia visitors in 2025 has already matched 2018/2019 levels. Those weaker regions are North Asia (Japan and South Korea), the numbers of the First 3 months of 2025 was around 66% of 2019, and mainland China, where May 2025 was 66.4% of May 2019. (-1.6 mil)

https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/web_t...?id=650-80001#

you should be correct how about competition against the Filipino low cost carriers remember they are against 5J and Z2 on HKG-MNL/CRK. If they want to step it up open something like this HKG-DVO/ILO currently 5J monopoly

HK Express can solve some of their issues by.
selling full service tickets and connections on all their flights to CX.
Like how indigo does in India with their international codeshares partners.

You get higher yields this way.

Unfortunately considering CX is kicking UO out to another terminal i presume it will remain loss making and HK origin focused.

I don't think it's good business model that a premium full service carrier will allow a passenger to pay a "premium", then move him/her to a low-cost carrier for part of the journey where even a bottle of water costs money. So the higher yield comes from tricking the customer on false expectations?

The most successful low-cost carriers out there don't typically facilitate connecting traffic even if both are on their metal. So it's all O&D traffic from their perspective.

CX + UO traffic figures for July 2025

CX July 25 (CX+KA July 18)
ASK(000): 12,256,459 (13,665,105)
% Change VS July 2024: 29.6%
Cumulative July 2025: 79,048,923 (89,435,486)

RPK(000): 10,533,262 (11,845,091)
% Change VS July 2024: 30.3%
Cumulative July 2025: 67,184,153 (75,655,005)

Passengers carried: 2,489,154 (3,152,973)
% Change VS July 2024: 23.9%
Cumulative July 2025: 16,115,730 (20,637,677)

Load factor: 85.9%

UO July 25
ASK(000): 1,619,321
% Change VS July 2024: 37.9%
Cumulative July 2025: 10,429,733

RPK(000): 1,225,156
% Change VS July 2024: 14.2%
Cumulative July 2025: 8,172,650

Passengers carried: 685,784
% Change VS July 2024: 21.6%
Cumulative July 2025: 4,476,717

Load factor: 75.7%

CX+UO July 25 (CX+KA July 18)

ASK(000): 13,875,780 (13,665,105)
RPK(000): 11,758,418 (11,845,091)
Passengers carried: 3,174,938 (3,152,973)

HK visitors to japan fell 37% in july (100K less people means around 3330 less a day), so that UO load factor is hoenstly higher than i thought. i guess everyone went to other places like SE asia , or further places instead, which is maybe why CX load factor is still doing amazing. also this might be the first time CX group has surpassed 2018 levels.

it is also worth mentioning that other carriers (including HX and HB) carried less passengers than 2024 to HKG, so CX and UO are claiming even more market share.

Looks like the CX group as a whole has more or less recovered to 2018 level, even with the sharp drop in pax heading to Japan.

Apropos to the discussion above of UO, just did a short round trip with them to Hanoi. The flight was codeshared with CX which I assume allowed for connections and possibly lounge access, and the planes were full each way.

I bet they could add another service on this route and do well; the early morning flight times clearly didn't deter people but more might want to fly it still with other options.

They could also probably afford not to pad the schedule so much and motivate even more traffic; advertised as 2h but closer to 1.5, it's a route that's not really much longer than Taiwan.

There is just no competition to CX/UO right now. HX has been a mess for so long that passengers no longer know what to expect of them; no clear strategy on routes, old and run down planes, pricing all over the board. HB is an even bigger mess with terribly-timed cancellations hurting their public image, and despite all the fanfare when they first launched, they are just running 7 planes.