Of course, that's why OW's market share in PEK is 1.5%, less than 0.5% in SHA and CAN while ST and *A controls over 75%. Plus OW doesn't even have a Chinese page.


It makes them the only choice unless you want to convince one of CA, MU or CZ to switch.

Unlike QF's plan to start a HKG carrier targeting premium travelers to major Asian cities.

Hyperbole. Nothing more.

Agree.

SkyTeam should be very glad that CZ MU FM and MF are in China.

Because if the situation is in Europe or USA, CZ, MU and FM would be subject to anti-trust investigation and monoply routes would be forced to give up slots to allow new comers in.

There are at least 10 major routes are totally controled by SkyTeam in some case last time I had a look.

Possibly.

If that were the case, though, it would be nice to see CX's actions matching their thoughts. But the reality is that there's precious little cooperation, even when some might be expected (eg during disruption) - not that the BA/QF relationship is exactly good now, either.

actually i always thought MU accession to ST rather fishy, to say the least, and they had the good fortune to have found an individual with excellent guanxi such as comrade chairman Liu. I have a hunch however that the situation is not going to last, so at the end both OW and * are going to have the last laugh.

Actually no OneWorld websites are available in China, the government agencies there are blocking them. Official story is because a banned labour union has a similar name but might also just be to harass competitors of Air China.

Just tried the OW site using .greatfirewallofchina.org and it's not blocked. Even it is blocked it should still have a traditional Chinese page serving HK customers, considering CX is a founding member.

That would make FM the only airline to have been in *A, ST and OW if MU switches to OW.

Hainan really isn't that big of a player in the Chinese market, even though they love to show in the the media their 5-star rating. I don't think them entering the market will do anything to diminish the fact that MU, CZ, CA basically control it all.

The Chinese government has a lot more power than SQ, so whatever they want will happen or whatever SQ's price is, they can pay it.

No one in China really pays CX or Dragonair fares. They're all like 3/4 times as expensive as MU every time. CX has some decent fares, but obviously they're all from HK. I seriously think every time I take a flight in Y based solely on price I am flying MU. If I lived in Beijing I'd probably take CA every time. Now that Taipei flights are increasing from 'other' carriers and outside of HK, I don't know why Chinese would take CX. Even flying to HK is always a lot cheaper on MU.

This all being said....CX is a lot better, and I regularly take their flights to JFK.

I disagree. They are growing at a rapid clip with no signs of slowing down. Furthermore, their airport management business puts them at a strategic advantage to their peers (e.g. they tend to win slot control battles fairly often).

While you're probably right that the lion's share of pax on CX/KA are commuting from HK to China and not the reverse, I know a lot of PRC based people who try to fly CX/KA as much as possible. Sure, it's expensive, but it's not as if any other airlines are especially cheap close in (I'm talking mainly about PEK-HKG; I realize that the SHA-HKG market is different due the presence of those two cheap airlines).

I would have thought that driven to make a choice OW would go on bended knee to retain CX and drop the old red kangaroo in a heart beat.

QF is sadly been driven down by more efficient carriers and it's future is not so certain.

It all sounds like typical rubbish from a media tart outlet.