Mountain Explorer

What is your source for all this information? Or are you just guessing?

quasihumanist

ICN and KE: The old thread about KE suggested that one of the problems is that KE is really a big family business rather than a public corporation, and Delta just doesn't know how to deal with a family business that frequently is more concerned about status and pride rather than profits.

PVG: When you connect ATL-AMS-BOM, you get off your plane, walk to the gate for your new flight, and get on the plane. It used to be that you had to go through security at the new gate, but even that's gone now.

When you connect ATL-NRT-SIN, you get off your plane, walk 50 feet, go through a simple security check point with courteous officials who try to speak English, go 50 feet to your new gate, and get on the plane.

When you connect AMS-ATL-GIG, you get off the plane, walk half a mile, wait in a line to go through US immigration, get harassed by an immigration officer who won't speak your language even if they could, wait for your baggage, wait in another line for customs, drop off your baggage, go through a security check point and get harassed by a few more people who can't speak your language, and walk another half a mile to your new gate, then get on your plane.

Both for silly domestic political reasons and because the domestic market is much bigger than the international market, PVG is always going to be run like ATL and not like AMS or NRT. Sure, for now, they have a system where some airlines are trusted to escort individual passengers through back hallways to their new gates without going through immigration, but it's designed as a small scale temporary exception, not a general large scale international transit solution. The Chinese populace and the Chinese government (both on average every bit as xenophobic as the average Trump voter) simply aren't interested in having a large operation that caters to foreigners and is set up for their convenience. This is unlike the Dutch, who have known for five centuries that they'd be starving on meager rations of herring and potato under the oppression of some foreign prince if they couldn't work with friendly foreigners.

PVG is a perfectly fine transit point for connections into China, but for the rest of East and Southeast Asia, no thanks.

FlyingWithers

Good points all by the OP. I like ICN, but do keep in mind that the crazies in North Korea are only a few mines away.

Sure hope NRT stays the way it is. I love the airport and its efficiency. And the best SkyClub in the system is there. Great showers, self-service drinks, and nice showers.

31693884

Geographically, ICN is the only other option, maybe PEK too. PVG is too far south.

DA201

These are excepts from a CAPA article this summer when they were talking about the impact of Delta's potential purchase of Skymark on a formation of a Delta-Korean JV.

"Delta wants a joint venture with Korean Air, which is not convinced of the benefits. Korean Air is also sceptical of and sometimes disgruntled by Delta’s flip-flopping commitment to having a hub in Japan versus Korea... the defining view appears to be that Korean Air is larger across the Pacific... Seoul Incheon Airport has publicly stated it has offered to help Delta move its Asian hub to Seoul... Korean Air could help Delta access other Japanese points over Incheon instead of Skymark’s (smaller) network... If Korean Air and Delta can strike a deal, Korean Air would surely want Delta to be fully committed and to flow Japanese traffic over Incheon."

FWAAA

While anything is theoretically possible, I don't believe that the Chinese government will ever grant DL or any foreign carrier the 5th Freedom rights that DL and UA possess in Japan (which have their genesis in the outcome of WWII). Short of a decisive military victory over the PRC, I don't think 5th Freedom rights for USA's airlines are in the cards.

Without those 5th Freedom rights (which permit DL and UA to carry local traffic in addition to their own connecting passengers), the NRT hubs would not be viable. By extension, even if DL could manage to secure enough PVG slots to operate its Asian hub at PVG (with whatever freedoms are necessary to carry their own connecting passengers but no local traffic), the lack of local passengers would doom any DL-metal connecting flights.

The NRT hubs of DL and UA are anachronisms anyway, as it's much more cost-efficient to leave those connecting flights to Asian carriers based in that region - which is one of the big reasons that DL fought so hard to put JAL in Skyteam back in 2010 when JAL stayed with AA. UA has scaled back its NRT hub in favor of its joint venture partner NH, and AA has the benefit of a jont venture with JAL.

Either that or DL should start, invest in and nurture a third Japanese carrier that could do its Asian connections like NH and JL do for UA and AA.

Or, IMO, the most logical answer would be to form an immunized joint venture with KE and move the NRT hub to ICN, letting KE carry those connecting passengers. DL would then optimize its USA-TYO flights for O&D (probably meaning smaller planes) and build up more flights to ICN.

Since anything is possible, I won't say that there's no chance that DL gets enough HND frequencies to move its NRT hub there, but I don't think the odds are very good that will happen.

DL2SXM

The only way a successful Delta operation out of ICN to SIN/BKK/TPE etc would work is if Korean allowed full seamless usage of a DL GUC on those Korean operated flights to the SE Asian destinations. Anything short of that will result in a complete and expedited failure.

As far as other Japanese carriers to assist DL, there aren't any.

motytrah

I guess it depends on if DL actually wants to run the Interprort traffic or just treat it like AMS and let the partner handle most of the connecting traffic while keeping a selection of high profit direct flights.

The problems is neither MU nor PVG is anywhere near ready to do that. And it's also well reported that Western companies have been moving their Asia based executives out of China and to more Western friendly places like SIN. Why put your management chain or your IP in the cross hairs of the Chinese government if you don't have to?

There's been a prevailing opinion in this forum that the sun is setting on Japanese business and that NRT is on right sizing down to actual needed O/D. Out of curiosity I looked up the numbers and I was kind of surprised to see they are back to total passenger operations are back to pre-bank crisis levels. Some of the best numbers ever for NRT despite DL pairing back some of the interport routes the last 5 years or so. It feels like there's still a lot of money on the table in USA/TYO routes.

I agree but DL irritated KE enough that they entered a code share agreement with AA for ICN-DFW. It's quite possible we're looking at a Pixar/Disney (Eisner and Jobs) kind of deal and it won't be possible to fix the relationship until Anderson retires.

31693884

No it won't, stop it with the histronics. What's the average number of GUCs on each TPAC DL flight? 0.5? I bet it's less.

FWAAA

So without full upgrade privileges on economy tickets, partner connections would be a fail? That's a good one!

Where would the aggrieved DL elites go? UA or AA, where systemwide upgrades don't work on NH or JL?

While upgrades are nice to get, the people who matter buy premium cabin tickets.

You don't say . . .

That's why I wrote "start, invest in and nurture a third Japanese carrier," you know, like Richard Branson did with Virgin America. Anderson seems to enjoy investing in every foreign partner, so why not invest a few hundred billion yen in a new Japanese carrier? And since Branson is now partnered with Delta and he has experience in this area, put him to work.

Cris L

Way back in the 80's NWA served Seoul from LAX, SEA and from NRT.
However also 3x a week the flight from SEA to SEL continued on to Manila.

I have recollections of other routes from SEL which may have been codeshares with KE, but I can't be sure of this. Perhaps someone with access to those lovely old printed timetables would be able to advise more...

I am fairly sure that I recall NWA calling SEL a minihub, and closing it when they got into financial trouble in the 90s as a result of the Chechi buyout.

DL2SXM

And I would bet its more. Unless you work for revenue or for some other high level managerial position at Delta, we will never know. As far as I see it, having a successful operation to SE Asia depends on whether or not the GUC's can be used on those long haul intra Asia flights, whether on DL metal or a partners.

DL2SXM

For the vast majority, having the ability to upgrade on a coach ticket to business class to the bowels of Asia matters. If you take that ability away with Delta, then I bet you a lot of folks will move their business to UA. Not everyone has $8,000 to spend on a business class ticket. I would imagine to that AA is the last choice of airline for someone to pick when flying to the southern part of Asia, unless of course you have $8,000 to spend on a business class ticket or just want the lowest fare with no hope of an upgrade.

31693884

Let's say there are 40k Diamonds [1]
There are 23 daily departures to Asia (and thus 46 in both directions) [2]

So for each TPAC flight there are, on average 2.38 Diamonds. [3]

Some Diamonds will have already booked J. Some Diamonds will not have selected GUCs (or will have used them already). Some Diamonds fly exclusively to Europe or South America.

So I don't think 0.5/flight is off base.

[1] http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...edallions.html
[2] http://news.delta.com/report-undersc...portunity-asia
[3] 40000/(23*2*365)

FWAAA

While I applaud your initiative, you assumed a fact not in evidence: that each Diamond flies to or from Asia exactly once each year, and I don't think we have data to support that assumption. You'd need to know the average number of Asian roundtrips each Diamond takes each year to compute the average number of Diamonds on each flight. Unless each Diamond gets only one upgrade cert per year. If that's the case, then ignore.