SanDiego1K

I believe that jielie is referring to post 2 of the thread for which she gave a link. A direct link to it is this:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16428317-post2.html

The lower third of that post deals with Chinese airlines and is reproduced here. There is substantial meat in the rest of her post about air travel, and it is worthwhile to read in its entirety.

jiejie

Yes, this is what I was referring to, Post #2 of the "Master Transportation Thread" and specifically the part that SanDiego1K reproduced above. Very sorry for the confusion. The first few posts of this thread dealing with the various means of transport including air travel, are updated as needed, or at least 3-4 times per year, in order to account for accumulated changes in facts, procedures, etc. as the Chinese roll them out.

MSPeconomist

Sorry, I misunderstood where to look for the link.

It's interesting that the naming of carriers through to about the fourth bullet point largely agrees with my own perceptions, as summarized in my earlier post, but I wonder what happened to Chengdu and Sichuan; I've often seen them at mainland Chinese airports although I've never attempted to fly on them.

moondog

IIRC, CZ and FM have a combined 49% stake in Sichuan Airlines, though Shandong Airlines (on track to join *A under CA) also has an interest. The ownership structures in the industry are fascinating to me, especially as the alliances (ST and *A) add new carriers... e.g. who'd have ever guessed that KN would be positioning itself to join ST 5 years ago?

skchin

Great idea. It'll be an interesting forum. ^

MSPeconomist

It's interesting but it's also hard to remember who has an ownership stake in whom, who is a subsidiary of whom, etc.

jiejie

Sichuan was an oversight. Chengdu is pretty minor player. I've just added both with links to the Master thread in the "major regional" and "niche players" respectively.

I've tried to keep the domestic airlines separated out as individual entities if they are still marketing and operating quasi-independently, even if they are owned by some other larger airline. Of course, things may change in the future if/when consolidation occurs.

coolfish1103

I see that my previous posts in the old thread was mentioned.

I use to think separating the forums between China and others are okay because China in itself is a big entity with tons of domestic operations. However, with Flyertalk being a majority Western user forum, China carriers (with the exception of Cathay Pacific in HKG) are probably not a priority that needs a forum by itself.

I don't mind if it gets created (if it excludes Hong Kong and Taiwan carriers), but I don't think it's needed based on how many threads there are about them.

travelkid

I do see those practical reasons on travel destination. Not so for airline carriers/FFPs

Overall FT visitors to NK may be as many as Antarctica (having a separate forum), and you find quite some TRs for NK on FT. Obviously the number is low. But my points is despite those countries still techincally being at (civil-)war, I havent seen one single problem, with flamewars or other such stuff, and I cant foresee this being a problem in the proposed forum either. I have so much trust in the posters and the mods.

Pretty bald statement. Its like saying FT wont work, as there is plenty of evidence that new forums have worked very well

Im not sure if I have given you reason to believe I dont know OMNI exists but as it should be pretty clear from my posts, Im trying to not involve politics in the main forums.

An added thought. We have 3 possible outcomes (unless we complicate and discuss HK/Macau carriers separate as well). Keep Chinese and Taiwanese carriers where it is grouped together (with others), put them together in a new variant of Greater China forum, or let only Chinese carriers get a standalone forum. (A 4th solution, which I believe is suggested by none, is that both Chinese and Taiwanese carriers get separate forums, so wont consider that here.)

The crowd arguing that Taiwanese and Chinese carriers cant be grouped together would obviously of those 3 prefer a separate Chinese carriers only forum? That would be the only solution to eliminate all those alleged problems of having them in the same forum. (although of course I dont see those problems- or ghosts -as is a term introduced in this thread)

But again, Im perfectly fine with having Chinese carriers only. There is absolute no way that I will include Taiwanese carriers of some nationalistic reason. Im a total outsider in that question, and tend to be rather far more Taiwan friendly than China. Im purely practical and not political on this issue.

Kachjc

Flyertalk is about FFP's

And that should be the focus, so no matter how big the airlines our, if their FFP is underdeveloped it makes no sense.

Cathay Pacific for example is much smaller than the BIG 3 , their FFP is however very well developed so their thread alone has huge volumes compares to threads about the chinese carriers combined.


If this were an airlines/planning focused discussion forum(this does happen here but it is not the focus), it would make sense

travelkid

Thanks for the legwork^

Ive done a similar search. I have also only been looking at thread titles (checking OP if title unclear), and not posts. There will always be a number of posts scattered around other thread titles so any number of relevant threads/posts would be I would guess at least clearly if not significantly higher than the numbers we present here. In addition you will have the synergy of making it easier to post a question if you have a dedicated forum giving added exposure and useage.

Some threads are a bit vague, so whether to include or not in a tally would be subjective. However my overall numbers match pretty good with the above. During 2012 (less than 11 months) I found 142 thread titles/OPs on Chinese carriers and 89 on Taiwanese carriers.

Let me add that there were less than a handful threads on carriers based in HK/Macau. It doesnt matter much where they are placed, but at second thought I actually believe they may fit better in CX forum?

This is a forum based on FFPs, but as normal is all over FT, any questions related to the carriers in question outside the specific FFP details (dominant FT wide) are asked in the specific carriers forum. In that aspect I only see 3) and 6) from above as less relevant when doing the metrics (I have not counted such).

I have been reluctant to count any XXX vs Chinese carrier thread. But with that said I actually believe such requests would receive better answers in a Chinese carriers forum than in any of the main forums, where they easily drown.

I added a search of "China" in thread titles under miles&points, and not double counting any from the region forum, I found another 50+ threads titles scattered around which would have been moved to or originally posted in a Chinese carriers forum.

I have not searched for "chinese", or any of carriers real names or abbreviation forms. Based on these numbers above Chinese carriers would have about 200 threads in less than 11 months and Taiwanese carriers almost 100 threads, before adding all those not searched by me.

I estimate at least 300++ Chinese carriers threads and 150++ Taiwanese carriers threads.

These numbers considered its more or less a no-brainer to dedicate a forum. These numbers crunch all metrics on all other program/destination forums passed during recent years as far as I can establish.

I hope that TB will continue to use their standard of metrics as one (important) factor. We see it on every proposal that there are several that dont want more forums, seemingly not accepting the standard set. Especially as this is about the internationalization of FT as well. Well used phrase during election.

Another suggestion during elections have been to set up polls, which would be a nice way to reach more members than just a small group of anti-posters.

In any case, TB is supposed to review all forums annually, and if this fails Im more than happy to see it go. Whatever "fails" is of course.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for listening^

moondog

Just because people repeatedly ask really dumb questions like how to contact airline X (short answer = call them!) or which airline to choose between PEK and SHA (short answer = they're all the same) does not mean that such drivel warrants its own forum.

dvs7310

Perhaps that was the focus when Flyertalk started, however look at that from an outsider's perspective rather than an idealist perspective. How many threads in the mature forums are actually about the FFP itself? I follow the UA forum quite regularly since that's where I bank nearly all of my miles and how many threads are actually about Mileage Plus on a day to day basis? Many threads are more about seats/aircraft, food, customer service, website, luggage allowances, etc. I think all of these types of questions and discussions are perfectly valid for Chinese airlines too. If Flyertalkers were only interested in topics directly related to their own FFP then they would never have a reason to look beyond that particular forum... however I and many others do read other forums because the information contained is interesting and/or relevant to our own travel, not only about those FFPs.

My opinion on this is still the same as before in other threads. I support and would like to see an 'Airlines of China (PRC and SAR)' forum separate from the Other Asian Airlines forum. While the FFPs themselves may suck on these airlines and I personally could care less about how many miles I need to book an award ticket with Phoenix Miles or Sky Pearl Club, there are still a lot of threads that come up currently for these airlines dealing with a variety of other issues that our global user base would find relevant. A lot of us fly in/via China on these airlines because of Alliances, however even the non-alliance carriers are interesting in many ways. HX and NX both offer good intra-Asia deals but don't know a whole lot more about either beyond their names. HU has certainly become a global player itself although it is still not in a major alliance.

In the end, judging whether or not to create a new forum limited to only FFP discussion is very shortsighted. Flyertalk readers care about many topics beyond that.

jimbo99

^^^

Good point.

The problem with the status quo is that (for example) a poster with an EVA query just posts the question onto the latest EVA thread because relatively speaking it is on topic to do so. So threads tend to wander around. This is the only problem I can see and it will not be fixed by an "Airlines of China" forum.

So I prefer separate forums for separate airlines - even if traffic is low. ELSE, keep it as it is.

I don't want an airlines of China forum, but if there must be one, I believe that Taiwanese airlines belong there (though I don't mind calling it "Airlines of China including Taiwan" or whatever.

As for the politics, if we do have a China grouping and it includes Taiwanese airlines, then some will resent having to post there. If it doesn't, there will be some who will resent being told that their "China Airlines" posts don't belong in a "Airlines of China" forum.

But lack of consensus (more than political issues) suggest to me that there should be no change.

travelkid

One of the benefits of the proposal is to reduce this clutter, and make it easier for members to navigate and know where to post.