Hello all, my first thread. I searched for this, but I didn't find anything.

So, I understand that United decided to vacate JFK at some point entirely and focus on EWR as their NY hub. As a result, or potentially just because it suits them better (or both), Air Canada only flies to LGA and EWR. Which means that no North American member serves that airport. This isn't news.

That's all fine and dandy, but what surprises me is just how many international Star Alliance flights (often their flagship flights) come into JFK. Singapore and Asiana drop an A380's worth of passengers off on a daily basis, Lufthansa has 3 different flights in (including a 747), Turkish has two, and that's not even considering ANA, Avianca, TAP, EVA, Swiss, Air China, Air India, SA, etc. The point is, there's a lot. But what puzzles me is this seemingly assumes that no one is connecting anywhere from JFK to the rest of US or Canada. They just stop in New York or switch carriers or use some sketchy van service to switch airports.

I guess I just don't understand the logic here. Surely the alliance members would work together to create connecting traffic, why is JFK such a black hole for them? Is it just that JFK can support *that* much terminating traffic? Is it just expecting that people wanting to connect will fly (almost anywhere) else to do it (ORD, LAX, YYZ, SFO)? Why don't more *A members fly into EWR then? Are UA and AC avoiding JFK just to feed people into their own longhaul network instead of an alliance members'? The history on this would be interesting.

There are more options than just JFK, and pax. wishing to connect can fly to ORD or IAD

Well, that's stating the obvious, yes. It doesn't explain what seems like a big miss for the network. Especially since neither ORD nor IAD are being fed by superjumbos.

I guess United would be the only option for STAR connecting traffic and their hub is in New Jersey. JFK is more point to point, NYC like LON has an enormous P2P profile.

EChid wrote:

Hello all, my first thread. I searched for this, but I didn't find anything.

So, I understand that United decided to vacate JFK at some point entirely and focus on EWR as their NY hub. As a result, or potentially just because it suits them better (or both), Air Canada only flies to LGA and EWR. Which means that no North American member serves that airport. This isn't news.

That's all fine and dandy, but what surprises me is just how many international Star Alliance flights (often their flagship flights) come into JFK. Singapore and Asiana drop an A380's worth of passengers off on a daily basis, Lufthansa has 3 different flights in (including a 747), Turkish has two, and that's not even considering ANA, Avianca, TAP, EVA, Swiss, Air China, Air India, SA, etc. The point is, there's a lot. But what puzzles me is this seemingly assumes that no one is connecting anywhere from JFK to the rest of US or Canada. They just stop in New York or switch carriers or use some sketchy van service to switch airports.

I guess I just don't understand the logic here. Surely the alliance members would work together to create connecting traffic, why is JFK such a black hole for them? Is it just that JFK can support *that* much terminating traffic? Is it just expecting that people wanting to connect will fly (almost anywhere) else to do it (ORD, LAX, YYZ, SFO)? Why don't more *A members fly into EWR then? Are UA and AC avoiding JFK just to feed people into their own longhaul network instead of an alliance members'? The history on this would be interesting.

Star carriers Austrian, Lufthansa, Avianca, TAP, Swiss, Air China, Lot Polish and Air India serve both EWR and JFK. So obviously connections can flow through EWR. Plus there's Star Alliance carriers SAS and Ethiopian who fly to EWR and not JFK. The Star carriers exclusive to JFK are SQ (used to serve both EWR and JFK, might again), EVA (just recently moved their EWR flight to JFK), ANA, Asiana, Turkish, South African, Egypt air, Copa, Brussels air, Asiana.

UA's history at JFK going back to the '90s had them only serving three routes, LAX, SFO and IAD. Most of the Star Carriers who are at JFK and not EWR already serve those destinations. So what connection opportunities are missing. Cairo-LAX?

STAR carriers with one or two flights seem to prefer JFK. It is a prestige thing. And as UA found out with their stated mistake of leaving JFK, the prestige thing means a lot to high value customers.

A lot of these carriers use JetBlue for onward connections through JFK. While not star, they offer a wide array of flights to international partners and offer a far superior
Y product than, say, UA does.

United and Air Canada have better uses for their scarce resources than to ferry low value feeder traffic to another airline’s flights. Alliance or not, United would rather feed traffic to its own flights at Newark or Dulles it chicago and Air Canada would rather keep traffic on its own network. Jfk carrier’s get fed through self connects or jet blue, and don’t forget the nyc market is pretty large and lots of service can be supported without feed.

It's just not necessary. The very few connections not possible out of EWR, such as CAI above can be served via FRA... LAX-FRA-CAI. Also AC stopped serving JFK for this reason, lack of Star carriers and it just wasn't practical when they want to funnel everything through YYZ for connections... YYZ-JFK was ussually only operating at 50-60% LF, and mainly (not all) O/D traffic, most of the connections were already possible out of YYZ.

A mix of prestige, sheer demand, and JetBlue partnerships probably allows plenary of demand for jfk.

Plenty of int'l to domestic connecting options at ORD, IAD, SFO, IAH for Star Alliance flyers.

Because Air Canada and United are pretty much only hub to spoke airlines, if they were to hypothetically start JFK service, service would be to ORD, DEN, IAH, LAX, SFO, IAD, maybe CLE, YYC, YUL, YYZ, YVR, maybe YHZ, and maybe YOW.

If that were the case, a pretty substantial portion of those destinations would have nonstop Star Alliance service to the destinations anyway (green boxes). No need to connect at all, let alone in JFK.

And if you're connecting to get to those stations anyway, all the rest have a one-stop Star Alliance itinerary connecting at a different point (yellow boxes). I doubt many people are going to choose an itinerary specifically because it connects in JFK.

And if you're determined to connect in the New York area, most are covered through Newark, too (blue boxes).



Other than maybe propping up a few struggling services, there's really no network positive to feeding AC and UA hub traffic through JFK since it's already covered with better or equal connectivity elsewhere.

It is frustrating. MS (my home airline) only flies CAI-JFK. Great when I'm going to New York. However when I'm going to DC, Boston etc. the MS site will show up connections with B6. If MS had a 2nd destination in the US (e.g. ORD or IAD) then things would balance themselves out. In addition, MS doesn't really work with UA in other places. Both MS and UA fly to the major European cities but it isn't common to see them interline through LHR, CDG etc. even though they codeshare. The only exceptions are the LH hubs, because MS and LH work closely together, as do UA/LH obviously.
The more common way to get to the US is to fly AF/DL, BA/AA, TK, SV etc.

DirectorGuy, why not connect via YYZ? MS serves YYZ, and you can clear US Customs in Toronto while connecting on AC or UA to BOS, ORD, NYC, PHL and other cities too.

YYZflyboy wrote:

DirectorGuy, why not connect via YYZ? MS serves YYZ, and you can clear US Customs in Toronto while connecting on AC or UA to BOS, ORD, NYC, PHL and other cities too.

Because I'd have to clear Canadian immigration/customs and US, plus would require a visa to just transit a Canadian airport. So would others coming from India, UAE, Turkey etc.

EChid wrote:

Is it just that JFK can support *that* much terminating traffic? Is it just expecting that people wanting to connect will fly (almost anywhere) else to do it (ORD, LAX, YYZ, SFO)?

This is pretty much it. YYZ, SFO, ORD, and IAD are much easier to connect at, often more in the way geographically, and just better in general for connecting lax from both a passenger and airline perspective, and JFK has easily enough demand to support A380s on SQ, OZ, LH, and other large aircraft.
Btw you can add LH to the list of A380s Into JFK.

directorguy wrote:

It is frustrating. MS (my home airline) only flies CAI-JFK. Great when I'm going to New York. However when I'm going to DC, Boston etc. the MS site will show up connections with B6. If MS had a 2nd destination in the US (e.g. ORD or IAD) then things would balance themselves out. In addition, MS doesn't really work with UA in other places. Both MS and UA fly to the major European cities but it isn't common to see them interline through LHR, CDG etc. even though they codeshare. The only exceptions are the LH hubs, because MS and LH work closely together, as do UA/LH obviously.
The more common way to get to the US is to fly AF/DL, BA/AA, TK, SV etc.

UA needs to get proactive in putting more codeshares, with its partners. The Star Alliance network isn't working as good as it should. MS flyers are not alone, however, TG/A3/ET having the same situation.

This isn't the 1960s or 70s were foreign carriers focus on JFK, their feed into secondary cities like ORD, IAD, BOS, PHL and EWR negate the need for this. Besides JFK is a terrible experience for connecting passengers that go Intl to/from Domestic unless you stick to AA and their terminal share partners or DL. With more flights to even the US West from lots of origin locations in Europe and the take up of carriers like DY and connections via the Icelandic carriers the focus for JFK has and always is NYC destined passengers.

Fascinating and thorough responses all, thank you so much! The question came about principally because I was using rewards to book flights through to Perth and Aeroplan makes it difficult to fly biz on AC all the way through (plus, there are better products for the points) so I ended up flying in/out of JFK (partially for the experience of Asiana A380 First, etc.). I've since realized how challenging it is to get from my home airport of YUL to JFK (Delta serves it a few times daily, but nothing works out particularly well). Anyway, thanks for the analysis. Very interesting.

skipness1E wrote:

I guess United would be the only option for STAR connecting traffic and their hub is in New Jersey. JFK is more point to point, NYC like LON has an enormous P2P profile.

Not only that, but most of the Star JFK flights still interline with non-Star airlines and a few would even be non-Star codeshares.

cledaybuck wrote:

Yes, JFK can support that much terminating traffic. Even if UA or AC serve JFK, where would they fly to? YYZ? SFO? LAX? How many connections to those cities would even make sense at JFK and not compete with Star non-stop offerings?

For a while earlier this decade, AC served JFK. First out of YVR, followed by a couple of daily CRJs to YYZ. I'm pretty sure YYC was never routed through JFK. YVR was moved to EWR and the YYZ CRJs were simply dropped given the plethora of AC service to YYZ at both EWR and LGA. I think AC also served JFK back in the 70s or 80s out of YWG?

directorguy wrote:

YYZflyboy wrote:

DirectorGuy, why not connect via YYZ? MS serves YYZ, and you can clear US Customs in Toronto while connecting on AC or UA to BOS, ORD, NYC, PHL and other cities too.

Because I'd have to clear Canadian immigration/customs and US, plus would require a visa to just transit a Canadian airport. So would others coming from India, UAE, Turkey etc.

The cost of the transit visa might be outweighed by the quick connections and reliable departures, not to mention less crowded airports.