wideman

Now hold on, this isn’t going to happen tomorrow or even next week, but some comments by Mr. Andrew Pyne, Cathay Pacific general manager for international relations, are extremely interesting. It’s a somewhat complicated story, as anything interesting regarding Hong Kong tends to be:

According to an article in The Standard, it seems that Virgin Atlantic wants rights to fly between Hong Kong and Australia. According to Pyne, any such routing available to Virgin would also need to be available to other European carriers, according to European rules. And that would be a big issue for CX, unless CX got something in return.

And here comes the intriguing part. According to The Standard, Pyne said that, if there were negotiations between Britain and Hong Kong with a view to letting Virgin fly from Hong Kong to Australia, then Cathay Pacific would want rights across the North Atlantic from Britain to the US. “Cathay Pacific has been seeking the rights from the UK to the US for a long time,” Pyne said. He said that, while Virgin wanted Hong Kong-Australia rights, “Virgin has been instrumental in blocking open skies between the UK and the US.”

JFK-LHR-HKG has a nice ring to it, don’tcha think?

azmmza

on nice mr in cx f

zhaobao

AAdvantage members who would rather not fly AA across the Atlantic will finally be able to accumulate points on JFK/LHR if CX is indeed allowed to fly the route....

jimyvr

Could be a big blow to Singapore Airlines, the carrier that has been waiting for permission to fly UK-US for many years.

Tango

This was the big thing CX pushed for with the open sky agreement with the US and did not get.

andrzej

This may be a stupid question, but wouldn't US have anything to say about something like this? After all, how would this benefit US based airlines?

YVR Cockroach

Fair trade as far as 5th freedom ("beyond") rights are concerned.

If U.S. airlines can fly to HKG, pick up passengers and fly onward to a foreign destination, CX or any other H.K. airline flying to the U.S. should be able to do the same.

AFAIK, there aren't too many, if any, passenger 5th freedom rights exercised by U.S. airlines. PA and UA periodically operated HKG-SIN. I think HKG-BKK was operated too.

ConcordeBoy

How could you forget the (in)famous DEL-HKG??

Exactly.

SQ will sh!t on itself if CX walks away with this "award"... and rightfully so IMO.

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Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre c'est impossible sans Concorde!
~ConcordeBoy

Try the Unofficial Continental Airlines Dictionary

YVR Cockroach

[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ConcordeBoy:
That's part of the old PA RTW flight (and also UA's UA1/2 at some later date? I forgot which route it took - thought it flew via BKK.

YVR Cockroach

CX (or the H.K. government) would have to obtain approval from both the U.S. and the U.K. SQ (or rather, Singapore) would have to get the U.K. to open up Heathrow. SQ has permission to fly Europe-U.S. (as they have with AMS/FRA routes to EWR and briefly ORD). The U.S. is o.k. with SQ operating LHR-U.S. but the U.K. government wants to protect BA and VS. MAN-U.S. is o.k. with the U.. government but not LHR-U.S.

alect

I assume if this went ahead AAdv would exempt mile-earning from CX transatlantic flights just as it does BA flights. Who in their right mind would fly translatlantic in AA ahead of CX????

PresRDC

AA doesn't exempt BA transatlantic flights from earning AA miles for marketing reasons, but rather for anti-trust reasons. Codesharing agreements require anti-trust immunity from the US government, which it will not give if the codesharing agreement involves an airline from country with which the US does not have an Open Skies accord. Since the US and HK have such an agreement, the US would not refuse antitrust immunity and thus AA would allow you to earn AA miles on CX transatlantic flights.

ConcordeBoy

Um... you do realize that none of this is correct, right?

777-232LR

Nor is this

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A340s don't fly... they're repelled from Earth by their ugliness!

[This message has been edited by 777-232LR (edited 05-15-2003).]

SHADO

And therefore neither is this...