Yeah, it's not likely they'd get approval to fly, but who knows...

New approvals� to 18 weekly from sept 1 and 24 weekly from oct 29. It�s not much, but�
EDIT: looks like United says daily Beijing and Shanghai service will resume? That seems like a very disproportionate number of these slots. Does anyone think they�re likely to get all of them, or is it just wishful thinking on their part?

Shared elsewhere already:

"The U.S. and China will approve twice the number of passenger flights currently permitted for air carriers to fly between the two countries, the Biden administration said on Friday, in a rare sign of cooperation between the world's largest two economies.The U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT) said it would will increase the number of Chinese passenger flights allowed to fly to the U.S. to 18 weekly round-trips on Sept. 1 and increase that to 24 per week starting Oct. 29 , up from the current 12."
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...es-2023-08-11/


"United to Resume Beijing Flying; Reintroduces Daily Service to Shanghai
United today announces it will resume daily flying between San Francisco and Beijing this November and will increase flying to Shanghai with daily flights from San Francisco, starting October 1, 2023."
https://www.united.com/en/us/newsroo.../cision-125284

My memory is a bit hazy, but weren't we at 14, not 12 at the moment?

I guess it is 12...

So a total of 48 China-USA flights per week from October 29, 2023?

Yes, exactly. Well, it may take until November, but yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help me too much, trying to go from East Coast to PEK....will have to see what the schedule will be.

And I somewhat doubt SFO-PEK will be an easy upgrade!

Maybe we need more time, but I haven't seen any indication that prices are trending downward.

Out of curiosity, is UA likely to fly to PEK or PKX?

My money is on PEK.

It almost certainly will be PEK.
Most STAR ALLIANCE airlines are all at PEK, SWISS and LOT being some of the exceptions.

-A doubling of capacity leading into Q4 pretty much guarantees substantially lower fares
​​​​

Put a number on it.

Average of 40% reduction.

I guess we'll have to reassess this at the end of the year.

That would be cool. Basically, pick ~20 city pairs now and come back to them in December. I'm guessing the effect won't be nearly as pronounced as we've seen with Europe and SE Asia fares, but at least the floodgates have been breached.