wwu123

When they announced SFO-TPE without any other flights from TPE, I was wondering if the plane just idles and the crew times out until the return flight the next day. With the flights and turnaround time being longer than 12 hours, aren't these planes just sitting around for the better part of a day? The planes could certainly do a few shorter intra-Asia legs before crossing the ocean again, just seems like the economics don't pan out.

AA_EXP09

i.e. to MNL mto compete with PR/5J/KL

cranky1K

I easily cleared ORD - HKG in February. But it was still 747 then.

kevincrumbs

Yup, gotta chase that high yielding TPE - MNL market that already has four carriers on it...

AA_EXP09

5.
PR, 5J, CI, BR, KL.
There are many OFWs in Taiwan and Taiwan allows visa free entry for Filipinos.

kevincrumbs

KL doesn't count since they have no traffic rights between TPE & MNL. Still don't understand why it would be a good idea for UA to send in a widebody to compete with an additional four airlines on the route.

AA_EXP09

Maybe the other 4 are there because it is profitable?
There would also be thru pax from the US, making it more profitable.
Don't US and Taiwan have open skies, making this possible?
PR does well with flights from the US, too.

Taipei

Not sure its highly profitable, probally marginal. UA would have offer lower fares, and with one LCC flying they would be hard pressed to make a profit at LLC fares. After the Taiwan-Phillipines problems earlier this year and just this past week (kidnapping and killing of Taiwanese tourist) traffic has been lower.

UA has such a big plane, not many routes to tag on without CI/BR flying on it, or LLC. Lots of new LCC flying to Taiwan recently.

unavaca

Flying TPE-XXX isn't UA's core competency - it never has been. Their core competencies are a.) domestic US flying and b.) International flying ex-US. They've had a tough time with both of these these last two years; trying to expand their core competency to non-US International routes right now seems like a bad idea.

UA_Flyer

UA tried daily TPE-SEL, TPE-BKK and TPE-MNL in addition to TPE-NRT while trying to make TPE a focus city in early 90s, and failed miserably.

RJNYC

Were these legacy Pan Am routes or something UA did on its own initiative?

andyh64000

This sucks because the previously difficult to upgrade SFO-HKG flight is now damn near impossible. Even E+ was gone on a flight I booked a month in advance.

halls120

I would agree that expanding non-US international routes isn't a good idea. But why give up the ones you have? I have always found NRT-BKK and NRT-SIN to be near impossible to UG, while on NRT-ORD, NRT-SEA, and NRT-IAD, I almost always was able to UG - so there must have been healthy front cabin demand for the SIN and BKK flights.

My guess is that the beancounters figured the overhead was too much for a single NRT-BKK flight, and given the push to cut costs in order to make Wall Street happy, BKK is the casualty.

5khours

Not sure I agree. Don't know TPE at all, but in the Japan market prior to the mergers, both DL and UA had pretty solid intra-Asia businesses. They both had very competent management in Tokyo, they tailored their sales and marketing to the local market, and they had pretty decent customers bases including Japanese business travelers, ex-pats, Japanese individual leisure travelers, and the travel companies/tour operators.

There were always the xenophobes who insisted on JL/NH, but a lot of Japanese friends, colleagues and associates thought UA/DL had pretty good products and FF programs. I never hear that anymore.

IMHO, both UA and DL have become very provincial in their approach to international business so it's not so surprising to see their decline and withdrawal from Asian markets.

UA_Flyer

IIRC, it was UA. Pan Am did fly to Taipei but did not use Taipei as transfer point for other Asian destinations.