China Airlines today returns to London after a 5-year hiatus. The first CI69 flight, operated by the "Blue Magpie" (Urocissa caerulea) special livery Airbus A350-900XWB, is currently enroute to London Gatwick with 306 passengers onboard. The flight time is estimated to be about 13 hours. CI69/70 will be operated four times weekly (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday). In the future, China Airlines hopes to increase frequencies to provide daily services. Frequencies have already been added on the TPE-SYD and TPE-BNE-AKL routes to capture the Europe-Australia transit market. The airline expects 30% of its TPE-LGW passengers to be transit passengers between UK and Australia.

According to media reports, China Airlines and British Airways have already reached an initial agreement to start cooperating as early as late-2017 or early-2018. China Airlines hopes to codeshare with BA on routes from LGW to other European cities, in addition to the TPE-LGW route.

An interesting fact about the first flight is how it contained so much freight that some baggages had to be offloaded. It was reported that the weight of freight exceeded the 13-ton limit of the A350-900.

Source (Traditional Chinese): https://tw.news.appledaily.com/life/realtime/20171201/1251275/ + http://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20171201000970-260405

Offloading people's bags for freight? Not exactly a smooth smart...

kaichinshih wrote:

An interesting fact about the first flight is how it contained so much freight that some baggages had to be offloaded.

If that indeed happened, then I'm surprised they let it go public. That's terrible PR.

kaichinshih wrote:

Frequencies have already been added on the TPE-SYD and TPE-BNE-AKL routes to capture the Europe-Australia transit market. The airline expects 30% of its TPE-LGW passengers to be transit passengers between UK and Australia.

*Finally* some competition on the kangaroo route

Also they’re quite actively trying to get back across to Heathrow so any BA codeshare at the moment would be to destinations on a p2p short haul sun model which is, as we say in Britain, “inteteresting”. I wonder if they’ve got LHR slots for the summer yet?

Skip

I'm a bit of a LGW fanboy and we all know how much you champion LHR but let China Airlines settle in at LGW first

China Airlines is a great addition to the airline portfolio at LGW and another full service long haul airline something the airport needs to expand on so hopefully we're see the airline at LGW for a while yet but I do agree with you that we're possibly be discussing China Airlines and LHR before long seeing that they have already announced their desire for slots there.

Water cannon salute under the iconic Gatwick Air Bridge

hayzel777 wrote:

Offloading people's bags for freight? Not exactly a smooth smart...

Yeah, imagine that you've paid good money as a passenger on the flight and then being told your luggage is...not present due to some cargo. I hope they got compensated really well for this.

But was that really the situation, did China Airlines actually off load passengers baggage in favour of cargo on the inaugural TPE to LGW route as I find that rather hard to believe regardless of what has been posted by the OP.

Cunard wrote:

But was that really the situation, did China Airlines actually off load passengers baggage in favour of cargo on the inaugural TPE to LGW route as I find that rather hard to believe regardless of what has been posted by the OP.

I can't see that from the two links posted by the OP...

yonahleung wrote:

Cunard wrote:

But was that really the situation, did China Airlines actually off load passengers baggage in favour of cargo on the inaugural TPE to LGW route as I find that rather hard to believe regardless of what has been posted by the OP.

I can't see that from the two links posted by the OP...

It may not be in the links provided but the OP clearly states it in his opening comments.

Many airlines such as PR, VN, and GA have launched flights to LHR and they found proper slots for themselves. At some point CI will want to move to LHR, but how will they get the slots? From AF or KL possibly?

Otherwise, how did CI fail LHR several years ago?

NichCage wrote:

Otherwise, how did CI fail LHR several years ago?

Needing to use an A343 nonstop and not being allowed to overfly Xinjiang/Tibet like other airlines.(They still cant do that on nonstops to Europe- eastbound they go south of the Himalayas then can enter Chinese airspace to HK and the across the straits, westbound they go north to Russian Far east and then Siberia).

Cunard wrote:

But was that really the situation, did China Airlines actually off load passengers baggage in favour of cargo on the inaugural TPE to LGW route as I find that rather hard to believe regardless of what has been posted by the OP.

yonahleung wrote:

I can't see that from the two links posted by the OP...

It was originally in the Apply Daily link but it seems that the article has been updated and this information has been removed for whatever reason. The original sentence is as follows:
"連貨運重量也超乎預算，超過13公噸標準，必須拉下部份行李，另想辦法載送到倫敦"
Direct translation: "Even the freight weight exceeded expectations, going over the 13-ton limit; must offload some luggages, and think of another way to send to London"

No passengers' bag were offloaded.

Reports were incorrect.

coolfish1103 wrote:

No passengers' bag were offloaded.

Reports were incorrect.

That's exactly how I saw it, incorrect reporting as no airline would do that on an 'inaugural flight' especially a high profile International flight such as TPE to LGW.

Passengers baggage would have been a priority way over any excess cargo if either had or even was offloaded.

Interesting CI thinks 30% of the TPE-LGW pax will be kangaroo route transit pax. TPE is not geographically well located for that business vs. SIN or DXB and CI has also extra long flight time.

The connection in TPE is also longer for CI's SYD/MEL/BNE flights than it would be via the ME3 or SIN for example.
I do think a fair few will try CI to Australia as a change from the norm, but 30% ? I doubt it. I'll offer it to my Oz-bound clients next time and guage their reaction.

As for the UK-OZ routing, according to GCmap LHR-TPE-SYD is 10602 miles, via SIN it's 10673 miles. The TPE route has a slightly more even split between the two flights.

I would highly suggest that anyone considering using China Airlines on the kangaroo route from LGW to Australia via TPE 'which by the way is incorrect as that route historically goes through Singapore' to have a stay over in Taipei as it's a fantastic city as is the country of Taiwan, having been there myself on several occasions I can thoroughly recommend a visit to what really is very underestimated country.

philvardon wrote:

As for the UK-OZ routing, according to GCmap LHR-TPE-SYD is 10602 miles, via SIN it's 10673 miles. The TPE route has a slightly more even split between the two flights.

LHR-SYD great circile is 10,574 miles so you are right TPE is not that far off (incidentally, HKG is right on the great circle route... 0% deviation). But CI doesn't fly great circle route... it has to detour through Korea and Russia on the outbound and takes the southern route via India and HKG on the inbound.

I guess if CI is serious, they need to adjust the times of its Australian flights to minimize connection time.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=lhr-syd,+l ... hr-hkg-syd

It's a joke airline at the minute. Their service level has gone down two levels compared to what they were. It was only two years ago when the general perception is CI's service and cabin crew attitude was better than BR, now it's the other way around, especially since the new CEO came in last year and the staff went on strike. The staff are generally not as polite anymore and we vowed never to take CI again since December 2016 when the crew 'threw' hot food onto my wife's table with contents splashing out and burning my missus in the process, on business class. The said cabin crew didn't even apologise and went into hiding after that, never saw her again for the rest of the 13 hour flight from TPE-FRA. We complained but we only got a standard 'we're sorry this happened, thank you for your feedback' email. The ground staff quality really has gone down especially at check in desks, especially now that they're hiring part-time people instead of full-time fully trained polite staff. Staff who don't care about the company (can't blame them, they've had it out with each other for the past year at least).

I know a lot of people in Taiwan who would rather eat brown stuff than go on a China Airlines flight again.

I'm laughing at their 30% figure, once people realise they get better service elsewhere for the same price from London to Oz we'll see them stop London again soon. I maintain that there's not enough people that go between Taiwan and the UK to support two airlines running this route. I fly between London and Taipei with various airlines (mostly BR) and honestly you'd have to break it into two segments. TPE-BKK has a lot of pax, and BKK-LHR also has a lot of pax. TPE-LHR...I highly doubt more than 40% of the plane are with people going all the way. CI are completely relying on the kangaroo market for this to work. These days I go LHR-CDG and then BR's CDG-TPE as it's a much shorter journey than LHR-BKK-TPE. We used to do LHR-FRA and CI's FRA-TPE until they angered us. Not everybody will fly straight from London (on either BR or CI).

BRxxx wrote:

It's a joke airline at the minute. Their service level has gone down two levels compared to what they were. It was only two years ago when the general perception is CI's service and cabin crew attitude was better than BR, now it's the other way around, especially since the new CEO came in last year and the staff went on strike. The staff are generally not as polite anymore and we vowed never to take CI again since December 2016 when the crew 'threw' hot food onto my wife's table with contents splashing out and burning my missus in the process, on business class. The said cabin crew didn't even apologise and went into hiding after that, never saw her again for the rest of the 13 hour flight from TPE-FRA. We complained but we only got a standard 'we're sorry this happened, thank you for your feedback' email. The ground staff quality really has gone down especially at check in desks, especially now that they're hiring part-time people instead of full-time fully trained polite staff. Staff who don't care about the company (can't blame them, they've had it out with each other for the past year at least).

I know a lot of people in Taiwan who would rather eat brown stuff than go on a China Airlines flight again.

I'm laughing at their 30% figure, once people realise they get better service elsewhere for the same price from London to Oz we'll see them stop London again soon. I maintain that there's not enough people that go between Taiwan and the UK to support two airlines running this route. I fly between London and Taipei with various airlines (mostly BR) and honestly you'd have to break it into two segments. TPE-BKK has a lot of pax, and BKK-LHR also has a lot of pax. TPE-LHR...I highly doubt more than 40% of the plane are with people going all the way. CI are completely relying on the kangaroo market for this to work. These days I go LHR-CDG and then BR's CDG-TPE as it's a much shorter journey than LHR-BKK-TPE. We used to do LHR-FRA and CI's FRA-TPE until they angered us. Not everybody will fly straight from London (on either BR or CI).

Bad labor relations=no will to work=bad or decline in service