Well, of course, but lots of airlines (including BR and CI) have gotten that memo and optimized schedules accordingly.

For those people who live north of Seattle, I know many who would cross the border to BC to fly trans-Pacific because they can get better pricing from there. Both Y and C prices are significantly lower on most seasons.

I wonder how PR's new SEA service will impact their own YVR service?

And to not be too far off topic... (LOL) I wonder how much CI/ DL/ JX's new SEA services will impact the existing BR and CI services over at BC?

I know the crowds between YVR and SEA are quite different with the latter perhaps having more yields, while the former gets the price-sensitive folks. But PR is clearly not differentiating as they are flying their outdated 77Ws with no PEY to both cities.

Overall, 4 airlines on TPE-SEA plus PR on MNL-SEA would be a big win for people connecting from Southeast Asian cities going to SEA/ Pacific Northwest and beyond. The likes of NH has high prices out of SEA going to Asia but is pretty cheap originating from Asia.

I am not sure how many pax JX can capture, they only have 3 weekly at Clark and daily 321 in Cebu.

BR has daily 333 at Clark and Cebu. They also have 3 daily at MNL so they have connecting flights for all their destinations (including the morning LAX/SFO flights).

With JX leaving Manila, CI will be increasing their flights to 17 weekly mid-April (basically taking JX's flights). Is there even open skies between Philippines and Taiwan? I wonder if CI is managing to block JX off after JX decided they don't want Manila anymore. CI also has 4 weekly 321 at Cebu, but no Clark.

​​​​​​​Taiwan and Philippines have quasi-open sky... there are no restrictions on frequency, destination or equipment, but there is a seat cap of 30k per week. If you do the rough math, that is roughly 90x 77W/A333 per week.

So what this means is that incumbent airlines have every incentive to use the biggest plane to take up as many seat counts as possible to block new entrants.

Taiwanese carriers basically holds significant competitive advantage in air travel between the two countries due to asymmetric point of sales significantly favoring Taiwan, plus 6th freedom/beyond connection to the US. Business travel between the two largely originates from Taiwan and so do VFR due to outbound tourism and large expat Filipino population in Taiwan. And virtually no one from Taiwan is going to transit in MNL to reach the US due to the long detour whereas the opposite is not true... most Filipinos, especially those not in MNL likely favors (or at least indifferent about) transiting in TPE to reach US.

First to correct myself, there's apparently 2 more weekly flight on CRK for JX (the reporter did not mention), so it's actually 5 weekly TPE-CRK.

I don't think it's 30K on all routes, the news I got was 30K for TPE-MNL only (upped from 4.8K) since the bilateral revision in 2015, but nothing detail was given. Prior to the 2015 bilateral it was 4.8K on TPE-MNL, 1.7K on KHH-MNL and 3550 on other routes (back then was CI 14x TPE-MNL, 4x KHH-MNL, BR 7x TPE-MNL, AE 4x TPE-KLO).

2024/02

Cebu 33184
BR 14720
CI 7560
JX 10904

Clark 24314
BR 17922
JX 6392

Manila 93946
BR 53746
CI 35688
JX 4512

Kaohsiung-Manila
CI 5056

33184+24314+93946+5056 = 156500

156500/4 = 39125

February is a rough calculation since it's 29 days, but you got the idea. If it's just 93946/4 = 23486.5 (this makes sense). If I were CI I would go 21 weekly on TPE-MNL and then make them all 333s, increase KHH-MNL to daily, but CI's loading isn't great on this route.

I am already seeing USD3K business class tickets SEA-MNL or TPE on PR all through early December. I wonder if this will continue or this is just their introductory promo. I wonder if the other carriers will compete on pricing?

Starlux started hiring ground staff in HKG since end-March, so it seems like a Q3 launch of TPE-HKG is likely.

They have to launch or they will lose the rights (same for Tigerair). While China Airlines and EVA may not be interested for more rights, if either Starlux or Tigerair gets enough frequencies they can get some market set up. Right now they have only 15 weekly so I expect them to use 14 and have 1 in the morning and 1 in the late afternoon or evening.

This is great news for us customers. Especially the schedules on BR CI JX -- fantastic for connecting to/from e.g. BKK.

I flew on CI a couple of times when they served Seattle for a relatively brief period years ago. Back then BR's product was markedly better. I wonder about now. I also wonder why CI is returning, since they tried Seattle years ago and didn't last, and I don't recall any extinction-level event (covid) that forced them out.

CI is returning now because they have more planes that can operate the route. Plus they want to block JX from establishing on the route.

SEA was operated with A340 and once CI retired the type, returning to SEA was challenging. They now have enough A358 in the fleet so they can return to SEA strategically to block JX from expanding.