coolfish1103

After EVA started IAH the past week, the newest dated announcement for the services to North America is Chicago O'Hare (ORD) for end of 2016, with Washington (IAD) as prospects. In addition, Istanbul (IST) will become a scheduled destination in the top half 2016 after EVA has started codesharing the city with Turkish Airlines this year.

EVA plans to increase North America flights to 77 weekly by the end of next year, which includes a new destination Chicago. Currently the Star Alliance carrier has scheduled services to...

18-21x weekly Los Angeles
14x weekly San Francisco
7x weekly New York JFK
5-7x weekly Seattle
4-5x weekly Vancouver
4-5x weekly Toronto
3-4x weekly Houston IAH

Totaled 55-63 weekly to North America

Also, announced by John Eren, the Head of Asia Tourism in Victoria, China Airlines plans to start nonstop services to Melbourne (MEL) by the end of this year. With Melbourne becoming a newest destination for CAL in the Oceania region, CAL will be flying:

3-4x weekly Brisbane-Auckland
4x weekly Sydney-Auckland
3x weekly seasonal Sydney-Christchurch (1x weekly Sydney only if not flying to Christchurch)

Totaled 10-11 weekly
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I think EVA should consider re-starting EWR and not bother with IAD. Even though they are Star Alliance airlines just like ANA, but that doesn't mean they can start all the services that ANA has. If they really want to mirror ANA, maybe SJC could be a destination... but they don't have the right plane to do so.

Also, I don't think services to IST will do well, that place is asking for price cutting with so many airlines servicing the region with transit abilities (which EVA lacks).

One can suspect that China Airlines will make Christchurch a regular service destination as well if the city continues to do well in tourism and have business between the Tasmanian.

Melbourne will probably start off with 3x weekly services on an A333 (which is not great) and may slowly increase to daily flights along with Brisbane should the Chinese be allowed to transit in Taiwan per latest agreement from China.

lcpteck

It should be IAD right? Not IAH?

jerryhung

Good news
only ones I care are ORD, increased frequency to YYZ, and maybe IST (I'd debate between taking TK or BR... TK24/25 has had serious delay problems since inauguration)

coolfish1103

Yep. Corrected.

lolstebbo

In theory, they could use the A332 for it, but the seats wouldn't be competitive at all against what NH and HU offer.

bzcat

Is BR going to code share with TK on TPE-IST on BR flights?

Since BR code share with TK on TK flights now, BR launching the service on different days will allow both carriers to market daily flights.

ORD is known to be on BR's radar so that's not a surprise. IAD is interesting development. The UA feed should be decent but I'm not sure there is enough TPE originating traffic to sustain the service. BR must be looking at onward connection service to MNL and other places.

TennisNoob

Totally agreed! Especially United having a strong presence in EWR, United doesn't even fly direct TPE from EWR.

Pushing EWR makes much more sense like you said.

coolfish1103

Apparently Melbourne will also be a stop for flights to Christchurch, making Christchurch 6 weekly. So I highly suspect that Christchurch to turn into a scheduled destination on CAL.

I think they sold their slots to CX, not sure if they can fetch it back from another airline.

I think they are going daily on IST, don't think there's a need to continue codeshare on TPE-IST, but may still have IST-EUR codes.

I don't think IAD will work particularly well. It's a very far destination just to work on transit passengers.

They are retiring 332 in the coming years, so that's probably not the right aircraft at this moment.

bzcat

That's correct... CX is using it now for HKG-EWR.

UA is leaving JFK but I don't think BR has anything to gain from going back to EWR with UA. TPE-JFK is sustainable on O&D traffic and onward connection from TPE. And most of that O&D traffic is located in Queens. Very few people will need to transit at JFK coming off a BR flight from TPE. The ORD service will be better positioned to cater to those transit traffic to Eastern half of the US.

So they will be competing with TK directly? That's probably not sustainable in the long run.

username

I wonder if BR will use a different more connection-friendly schedule for ORD service. IAH schedule dos not work for connecting from IAH to other Americas destinations.

coolfish1103

Yes, they will be competing with TK, which is why I don't think IST will work in the long run. TK can do smooth transit connections at IST, EVA cannot.

EVA said their IAH market is not focused on transiting passengers within the US, but more for transiting passengers in Southeast Asia. I don't think the ORD service will be catered to transit passengers in the US either. They can all go to UA Most likely similar scheduling to JFK.

username

That is what I think they will do too but it seems they should try a more connection-friendly midwest/east coast flight. It is possible to have flights leave TPE a little early and still catch most of the SE Asia passengers. The plane just has to parked in the US a little longer before it flies back.

bzcat

My guess is that BR based their North American ops assumption on rather limited incoming US-originating feed from UA. And that's probably true because UA can funnel PAX on its own trans-pac flights.

But ultimately, there are only a handful of feasible TPE-US destinations beyond LAX/SFO/SEA/JFK... we are not talking about anything exotic beyond IAH and ORD based on distribution of Taiwanese and SE Asian populations in the US.

San Diego, Dallas, Minnesota (MSP), Northern Virginia (IAD), and South Florida (MIA) are the only other regions that has the demographics that fits with BR's strategy and each one of them is pretty flawed in some ways.

SAN - lots of Filipinos but close proximity to LAX and also short runways means BR doesn't have the right equipment.
DAL - lots of Taiwanese and Vietnamese but close proximity of IAH. It may still be worth a try though.
MSP - mainly Hmong and Cambodians and not enough Taiwanese diaspora... so it will be all low yield transit traffic.
IAD - lots of Koreans but fewer Taiwanese... upside - some corporate/Govt traffic but it's a long flight and 77W is probably too big.
MIA - mainly Filipinos but too far for direct flight to TPE - not economically feasible.

TennisNoob

I think BR's intention was to compete with CA who had no intentions for connecting to other american destinations. CA clearly proof'd the world that it can be done at IAH.


I was thinking maybe UA would lease a slot to them since UA doesn't fly this route. At the same time maybe they can get the JFK slot United had.