cairo & moscow
 

:confused: any idea when these new routes will be in operation?

First time I've heard mention of Cairo... (which would be stunningly good news for RTW travellers if true). I know CX has mentioned it is looking at Beirut as an onwards leg from DXB (or was it from BAH?). Moscow is bogged down in discussions with the Russian authorities and/or mafia. I don't think anyone is trying to predict dates any more.

cx never has much luck in the negotiating new routes. i think cx was given the go-ahead for the lon-nyc route quite some time ago. but it is still trying to get the approval from either eu, or uk, or us or all?

on the other hand, as far as i know sq has been flying this route for a long time already.

No, SQ flies FRA-JFK.

IIRC, what has happened is this: CX formally has the approval from the US and UK authorities to fly between LHR and NYC, but some airlines (including SQ, from what I've read) are protesting that they should be allowed access to the profitable NYC-LHR route as well. These airlines have asked the EU to look into the decision.

The possibility of a CX service to Moscow has been discussed quite a bit here but I personally doubt it's going to happen anytime soon. China Airlines ran a feature about Moscow as an upcoming destination in their inflight magazine in Spring 1998 and it never materialsed either.

As for Cairo, I've never heard of CX having any interest in flying there although I did read last year about them being keen to reinstate Istanbul. The current political climate was cited as an obstacle. In the meantime pax will have to make do with SQ (via DXB) and MH for their CAI - Asia travels.

It would be from BAH and there was a recent breakthrough regarding this happening.

Four months ago, Bahrain and Hong Kong agreed to unlimited flights between the two. Not only that, but 5th freedom rights were given from Bahrain to Beirut and ONLY Beirut (unless it's been expanded recently).

Supposidly this agreement was signed by the governments at the request of Cathay Pacific, so we might see them serving Beirut in the near future, perhaps next year.

Beirut is in need of more Far East service. Currently, Beirut's only direct link to the far east is 3x weekly Malaysia Airlines A330-200 service from Kuala Lumpur with a stop in Dubai. I heard they are doing pretty well.

Regards