Virgin & China Eastern Airlines
 

It seems my Nemisis, Big Dick (Mr Branson in case you don't follow my rantings) is in China today talking to the President of China Eastern Airlines about code-sharing ans a possible alliance.

Big Dick wants to fly London-Shanghai and then go in competition with BA on the London-Beijing route.

I wish him well, every time I have flown London-Beijing the plane has been virtually empty.
MF

Sir Richard would also ahve to deal with Cathay Pacific (which is almost always full)
and UA (which practically owns most of the Asia routes even though it comes from the West coast of U-S.)

PremEx could better verify this: but in my
last few trips to Asia the EWR-Tokyo and SFO-HKG and SFO-Beijing and HKG-Shanghai UA
flights were generally packed.

Yes M-F.. let's wish Sir Richard well. He will need it in Asia! CATMAN

it was at least one-third-empty this sep (on my r-t-w). UA: SFO-TPE (and I was sitting upstairs - and I liked it more than downstairs - I liked very much the side-bag-compartement).

The routes from SFO that end in either Beijing or Shanghai are usually full from Tokyo (Where both have a change of planes) to those two cities because of the number of people boarding in Tokyo. Many people will arrive from other North American points and get to Shanghai or Beijing on the portion of 853 or 837 that is local to Asia.

Also, there are currently, much to my chagrin, no UA flights codeshare or otherwise between Hong Kong and Shanghai. The best you can do for comfort or service at the moment is DragonAir (a.k.a. Cathay Pacific).

Many of the peiople going into and out of Shanghai to/from Europe fly to either Beijing opr Hong Kong to get to Europe. Lufthansa, SwissAir, and Air France get you from Shnaghai to Europe. I imagine it is the rather substantial group that want to get to the UK but have to go through Paris, Franfurt, Beijing, or Hong Kong that Dickie B is after.

yes, UA doesn't fly HK-Shanghai...Tokyo and Singapore are currently the only two Asian destinations to/from HK...

this will change on Dec 15th though, when the flight SFO-HKG-SIN is changed to SFO-HKG-BKK...i'm really not sure why they made this change...why isn't the route HKG-BKK better served by another star alliance member TG ?? i think there'll then be no direct flight HKG-SIN on any star alliance airline...or maybe it's another sign that Singapore Airlines will be joining the alliance ??