oldchinahand

THE LGW route like the other routes mentioned up thread have never cancelled. They like hundreds of routes by other airlines have been temporarily suspended and there is absolutely no reason to consider any of them to be cancelled. They should all return when again the world can fly.

pogonation

Yes good point. I didn't think of slot utilisation. It may even be preferable to have 4 at LHR and 1 at LGW but they wouldn't be dropping that 5th precious LHR slot to be able to achieve it.

JW95

If that is the case, then I am relieved to hear that LGW has not been permanently cancelled as some mediareporting (erroneously) suggested around November last year. FlyerTalk won't allow me to paste this, but take a look E.g. at the Business Traveller article that reported in November that CX had cancelled LGW. I'm really hoping that LGW will be back online in the short term once LHR is fully back online to 5 daily. As others have suggested, it was a great route and complemented the existing LHR rotations nicely.

CLT

I got an interesting survey from CX today, and it seemed to be somewhat personalized as it as addressed me as a "Washington DC" flyer. One of the questions essentially asked if I would fly CX if they returned to IAD, and another asked if they did not return to IAD in the near future would I still fly with them via a "North American transit point".

Reply1984

It is quite interesting to see CX so fascinated to IAD. It is no secret that IAD service was struggling before the pandemic...Though you can blame it to the social unrest in Hong Kong, the performance was still not ideal.

garykung

Washington, D.C. is not only the capital of the U.S., but also the HQ of several international organizations, similar to GVA.

There is a reason why CX is interested / UA is not interested in IAD.

Reply1984

DC is a political center. People in Hong Kong are now trying to stay away from politics. There is no such demand of seeing and lobbying congressman in DC from HK. And don't forget the national security law. Maybe you can see the demand of Hong Kong-Beijing will be much higher than the pre-COVID level.

CLT

Is there concrete proof that the route was a poor performer rather than anecdotal evidence? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you and I agree I don't necessarily think the flight was a stellar performer.

I know the flight was down-gauged to a A359 almost immediately after launching it was supposed to be up-gauged back to the A35K during Summer 2020 with an additional weekly frequency IIRC. I would assume that the route couldn't have been so terrible if they were adding the additional frequency at the same time as the up-gauge.

Anecdotal, but I think the non-daily frequency, couple with the awkward IAD departure times (IIRC a 01:30 departure?) plus bizarre non-competitive business class fares really set the route up for failure. I would frequently see IAD-HKG in C for upwards of $8K-10K but would frequently see C fares to HKG on KE and UA/NH via ICN and TYO respectively with reasonably timed connections for just $3K-4K.

puchong

The CX/KA flight between HKG & Calcutta has now been permanently discontinued - much to my regret. Last option to fly there on a OneWorld carrier is now gone, unfortunately.

Reply1984

IAD was a fanfare destination frequently back to 2019. CX sent promotion emails several times for IAD. And I remembered the frequency was not increased due to social unrest in HK.

The late-night arrival and departure schedule is consistent to CX's North America east coast service(BOS/JFK/YYZ), for connections in Hong Kong.

deadinabsentia

I spent much of the two prior to covid commuting to CCU and other Indian places. Arriving on the KA was fine, but leaving was such a ball drag. The timing, the endless delays. I ended up taking Thai thru BKK simply to get home at a reasonable hour. Cathay treated India with much distaste and secondary service. No great loss.

CLT

I wouldn't count Fanfares being a hard indicator of a route's financial performance. When I lived in HKG full-time I booked Fanfare offers to Australia frequently (mostly SYD/MEL) and would often see them to JFK.

The IAD-HKG departure was an hour later than the comparable flight from YYZ and BOS, and unlike NYC/YYZ, there was no daytime option available. Dulles is also extremely far from Downtown DC (roughly 48 km-the same distance as Incheon to Seoul) and is difficult to get to at that hour, with no public transit options. I've struggled to get a rideshare or car to Dulles at that time from my place near Downtown.

ernestnywang

CCU definitely looks possible to be axed, but would you mind sharing the source? Like BLR, DAC, and KTM, these are ex-KA destinations that may simply not have been taken over by CX yet. Flights are not loaded for any of these destinations.

Reply1984

SYD/MEL also struggled...At that time the China-Australia open sky agreement brought tremendous amount of capacity to East Asia - Australia market. That's why CX underperformed in 2016-18.

shd9

Agreed that a daytime option might have worked better. There are many easy late-night connections I can make if I need to fly at night, like a 10pm AA DCA-BOS shuttle connecting on BOS-HKG (which pretty much still allows dinner time). On the other hand, if I preferred something during the day, CX only has an afternoon flight from JFK and AA's DCA-JFK service could be spotty.