IluvSQ

Its not only the Chinese advantage in Russian overflights, it is also the hours extra flying time, extra fuel,
and extra crewing requirements - even if both sides were on equal terms.

travelinmanS

Open it up and let the airlines decide if it’s worth it for them to fly. Certainly better than the situation now where the DOT is protecting the profits of UA, DL and AA at the expense of us consumers (who are supposedly their constituents).

moondog

We're talking about westbound flights only from the eastern half of the country, and there is no need to serve New York. But, if the cap is raised, of course they could figure out a way to make New York work without using Russian airspace (e.g. see CX).

m.y

There are 5 flights from Chinese airlines, you missed CA YVR-PEK, MF YVR-XMN, CZ YYZ-CAN, ZH YVR-SZX. AC doesn't have much capacity to expand and I think AC is just as happy flying China bound passengers to ICN/HKG/TYO.

j223

Anyone taken a look at CA 997?

Beijing to Vancouver with a tech stop in Shenyang? Very weird.

narvik

Oh, quite bizarre. They seem to always do this. Plane is a 777-300ER.
Is there the same flight in the other direction?

Found it, CA998, it's once/week. Going to Vancouver on Wednesdays and going from Vancouver on Thursdays, always with a stop in SHE.
It almost appears as it's a quota limitation, as in: they are not allowed to fly direct Canada-Beijing because of an agreement/quota. Can't see an actual technical reason for it.

moondog

That *might*make sense if another Chinese airline somehow managed to call dibs on PEK-Canada, but I can't imagine CA would sit back and allow that to happen.

The really crazy part of it is that the plane's scheduled ground time in Shenyang is 1:30.


They can't possibly need more fuel to tack on 377 miles to a flight that is shorter than NRT-SFO on a plane with a 7400-mile (fully loaded) range.

They are definitely not selling SHE-YVR standalone (and, why would they? PEK-YVR can certainly fetch enough customers for one run per week).

Switching crews also makes zero sense. If there happened to be a 777 crew base in SHE, CA would certainly fly them to PEK in order to milk their cash cow.

Basically, I'm completely stumped by this mystery. Odds are, someone who knows the answer will pop in during the next several weeks. Until that happens, we can continue to throw out theories.

m.y

I read that it's a restriction placed by the Canadian government, China did not allow AC to fly into PEK directly during the COVID days so Canada did not allow CA to fly nonstop to/from PEK either.

moondog

That's silly because China didn't allow ANY international arrivals at BJS during most of COVID. Still, it makes more sense than other theories on the table. But, why 90 minutes? Shouldn't 30 minutes be sufficient to land, pull up to a gate, and then leave?

tauphi

Perhaps to refuel? If it left PEK full it might have to dump fuel to land safely in Shenyang.

moondog

That's a good point for the eastbound; a 777 with enough fuel to fly across the Pacific Ocean would be far too heavy to land after 45 minutes of flying time. As such, they presumably load the bulk of their fuel in Shenyang, and that takes at least thirty minutes. I didn't check the return flight stopover duration yet.

ETA: The inbound flight only spends 75 minutes on the ground in Shenyang. It really shouldn't need to add fuel there, but maybe they are allotting for this in their schedule.

Palal

Inbound - that can also be to allow for any ATC delays and still arrive "on-time". A lot of the domestic flights are padded by 30-60 minutes and still manage to arrive close to 'on time'.

moondog

I'm not sure this is relevant, but during my Korea stops between 2020 and 2022 (on AA, AC, DL, and UA), the planes hooked up to jetbridges for the entire 75 or 90 minutes, even when it seemed like they could have left sooner.

Palal

So get this...

Eastern Airlines LLC - the airline that flies from Miami to the Dominican Republic and nowhere else, and has no pax ETOPS airplanes (no, this is not China Eastern) applied and was awarded the right to operate JFK-PVG in late July.

They were planning for 2 frequencies a week:


In their filing, they were planning to fly with a 772ER. For now, they only seem to use passenger 762s and 763s for their DR flights that are not ETOPS.
They have freight 772ERs . Their filing says they're planning on doing passenger and freight flights.
Wikipedia says they have some 772ER and 773ER
Relevant article here re:failed 777 freight conversion.

They initially suggesting flying via ANC and ICN as tech stops. This was when COVID was still there, so now if this ever gets off the ground, it would be via ANC.
Not sure if this also means that they are approved to fly by the Chinese regulator.
None of the major airlines filed any complaints about this. Eastern has 90 days to start service or lose the frequencies.

moondog

I admire their bravado, but when I was looking into them this morning (after you brought it to our attention yesterday), I noticed that this is their third or fourth time trying this. Of course, they won't be flying in the absence of an updated air services agreement because all 12 current slots are in use. Still, it's nice to see them making waves. They are presumably harder for the DOT to ignore than we are.