As some of you might know, QF have been tossing around recently the prospect of direct flights - probably from AKL - to ORD.

But, just this week, they announced flights to ORD, as a continuation of the MEL-LAX flight.

Now it has been thrown up, in another place, that this has occurred at this time because of the parlous state that UA has found itself in.

Going to DFW will take bodies from AA, leading to a leach from one oneworld carrier to another. oneworld sees no benefit, and they are bodies which QF would have carried anyway from LAX to wherever.

But going to ORD, on the other hand, with the current state of UA, opens up all sorts of possibilities - the main one being that people might think twice about using UA, and might instead use QF, leading to a drain from the Evil Empire (aka Star Alliance) across to oneworld.

This not only helps QF, but leads to a further drain on UA, and thus making their situation a little bit worse.

Any thoughts on this?

Dave

ORD is an AA hub, so the knock on effect will probably be the same regardless of whether they choose ORD or DFW. I doubt one flight would make that big a difference from AA's perspective. I agree it might provide an incentive for *alliance pax to switch, but doubt that it will really make that big an impact. I wish QF had stuck with the DFW option myself, it's a bigger hub with more options for onward connections.

I'm assuming that free-trade unfriendly USA has not granted QF traffic rights from LAX to ORD, so the market impact will be negligible.

Looking forward to the day when the US practices the free trade it preaches...

My guess is that it will hurt UA as the connection times in LAX will probably be better than the connections on UA, plus it will be a proper 3 class 744, so you'll get a bed in F.
Interestingly UA is now showing UA815 as ORD-SYD as a through flight, although of course you have to change terminal, as I assume this brings it up on the travel agents systems alongside QF.

UA815 ORD-LAX-SYD 1800-2017/2240-0610
757/744
QF94 ORD-LAX-ORD 1940-2140/2345-0725
744/744

This was a smart move on the part of Qantas.
Imagine the potential impact on OneWorld if Singapore started service from DFW. The Star Alliance is taking one across the bow at O'Hare. Eventhough AA does share the ORD hub with the feeble UA, the other star carriers generate a significant amount of traffic at O'Hare. Lufthansa, Austrian, SAS, Singapore, Air Canada and Mexicana all use O'Hare. The decision of Qantas to add ORD may be the beginning of a OW beach head, particularly with United on the brink. Will Cathay be the next carrier in Chicago?

Many of the Oneworld carriers also serve ORD directly - British Airway, American, Aer Lingus, Iberia and now Quantas.
We can only pray that CX will start ORD-HKG direct service, but I think AA has been pushing to start this service. Probably won't happen until 2004 sometime though.

Given that AA/CX now have permission from HK to do a significant amount of codesharing in Asia, and I think CX got rights for more US cities, I suspect HKG - ORD is only a matter of time for CX