wedgetail737 wrote:

Newbiepilot wrote:

I think the problem with HKG-SEA is that the competing Chinese airlines in the market have driven advanced purchase economy fares down to $500 round trip. SEA doesn’t have the strong financial sector to get last minute business class tickets. Amazon and Boeing are more frugal than financial companies. Amazon makes people fly in economy and Boeing has no problem with having people make connections to save money. When you combine that with the ridiculously cheap competition, profit is hard to come by. DL could Charge higher economy fares flying to Hawaii or New York with the A330 from Seattle.

Boeing does put up there overseas traveling employees in Business Class. But they are fairly price-conscious on the prices.

I think Boeing just more rigerously enforces the policy that you take the cheapest flight that meets business requirement, than they used to.

United Airline wrote:

ADent wrote:

UA will not restart SEA-HKG.

SEA is just a spoke these days and they would add more flights from a hub. Unless there was a strong tie in with traffic in SEA (ie AS), a huge contract in SEA that demanded HKG service or maybe a metal neutral JV partner from HKG that demanded service I see no way UA would serve this route.

How many international flights does UA have that doesn't involve a hub? (besides island hopper out of Guam?)

UA flew HKG-SEA-HKG with the B747SP. Did they ever fly HKG-SEA-HKG with the B747-100/200/400? NW flew HKG-SEA-HKG with the B747-200. Did they fly the 400?

Why did they fly HKG-SEA-HKG at the first place?

UAL started the SEA- HKG route with Leased DC10-30's back in 1983 (I think). The B747-sp's didn't come along until the Pan Am pacific division Purchase.(around 1985) Right after that the SEA- HKG route had to be given up to Northwest, then later Delta. (because of the Pan AM Purchase)
Honestly? We had our hands full in just Absorbing and flying the routes we had out of SFO and LAX.. We had B747-122's that had never even seen full tanks or loaded to Max gross weight. We bought 2 B747-222B models that flew JFK-NRT exclusively. For a while? We were hard pressed until the L1011's got overhauled and the B747-SP21's and SP27's got revamped. We also resurrected 5 B747-123's that soldiered on until the B747-422's came online to replace them.

Up to 1991, UA was flying HKG-SFO-HKG along with HKG-SEA-HKG. HKG-SEA-HKG was replaced by HKG-LAX-HKG.

1) DL does not have widebodies just 'laying around'
2) SEAHKG was poorly timed and used more than 1 plane
3) DL has some other long haul market initiatives coming up
4) The one day you flew SEAHKG and saw empty seats is not indicative of the performance of a market that day or the other 364 days or whatever it flew
5) SEA is very constrained with Int'l gates and customs facilities - space may be an issue for someone else to fly it
6) There could be a litany of reasons why DL decided to pull this market. Maybe the intention is to go back in when SEA expansion is complete and more widebodies are delivered

Only CX. UA barely has any presence in SEA anymore, and while AA may try, they have no other Intl routes out of SEA and starting a lone arbitrary HKG route would probably be problematic for fleet planning.

For SEA-HKG, A350/B777W might be too much plane. Something like A332/333 might be better. Also, CX does get good feed from its Indian flights to US operations. I feel CX can offer good one stop connectivity to India from SEA which has a growing Indian population.

I'm quite shocked that SEA - a very wealthy hub with large companies like Amazon and Microsoft - can't sustain a flight to HKG.

Perhaps an SQ 359 to SIN might work better, given that SQ and AS have recently signed a tie-up, and SQ and UA aren't 'friends'.

Cheers,

C.

I hope they will announce the new route at the ceremony of first b777 positioned in Seattle Museum of flight

It's a perfect A333 / B77E route IMHO.

DL has been using the 77E. I think the amount of Chinese carriers serving SEA has depressed prices so drastically that a high cost carrier would have difficulty competing against. Xiamen has screaming deals Hainan to PVG and PEK with connections, etc. all add to the difficulty of HKG. You can probably do a RT SEA SE Asia cheaper than a mid week SEA-DCA trip.

FatCat wrote:

It's a perfect A333 / B77E route IMHO.

Does A333 even has the leg to fly HKG-SEA year-round? Wind can be an issue on the way to HKG (Yes, it's within A333's specified range, but we all know there are other factors). Hence why DL used their A332 to fly that route before upgauging to B77E. DL, however, doesn't have that many A332s nor B77E/77L.

Since CX doesn't have any B77E (Only a few 772A that are about to be retired, including the one going to Museum of Flight in Seattle), nor A332, A359 is the logical plane for CX to start the route. CX doesn't really have that many A359 just laying around, though.

Prost wrote:

DL has been using the 77E. I think the amount of Chinese carriers serving SEA has depressed prices so drastically that a high cost carrier would have difficulty competing against. Xiamen has screaming deals Hainan to PVG and PEK with connections, etc. all add to the difficulty of HKG. You can probably do a RT SEA SE Asia cheaper than a mid week SEA-DCA trip.

Like I said many times, I highly doubt there are even that much connection traffic beyond HKG on SEA-HKG (Which is part of the problem DL face). To SE Asia there are competition on ICN and NRT, also (along with DL's own SEA-ICN to KE ICN-xxx).

planemanofnz wrote:

I'm quite shocked that SEA - a very wealthy hub with large companies like Amazon and Microsoft - can't sustain a flight to HKG.

Not really, I wished myself that the like of Amazon or Microsoft (Don't have to be them, just any software tech companies) has a larger presence in HKG. But no, HK local gov't has absolutely no clue about hi-tech sector. When the sole qualification to become the head of so-call "Innovation and Technology Bureau" consist of having met Steve Jobs a few times, you know you have a problem

zakuivcustom wrote:

FatCat wrote:

It's a perfect A333 / B77E route IMHO.

Does A333 even has the leg to fly HKG-SEA year-round? Wind can be an issue on the way to HKG (Yes, it's within A333's specified range, but we all know there are other factors). Hence why DL used their A332 to fly that route before upgauging to B77E. DL, however, doesn't have that many A332s nor B77E/77L.

Since CX doesn't have any B77E (Only a few 772A that are about to be retired, including the one going to Museum of Flight in Seattle), nor A332, A359 is the logical plane for CX to start the route. CX doesn't really have that many A359 just laying around, though.

True.
I was thinking only about capacity.

What is the PDEW?

gwrudolph wrote:

raylee67 wrote:

wedgetail737 wrote:

Did UA inherit the HKG-SEA-HKG route from PA? UA also had a much higher presence at SEA back then.

UA did not inherit SEA-HKG from PA. UA opened SEA-HKG as one of their first Asian routes, before they acquired PA's Pacific network. The service was started with DC10. I think they dropped SEA-HKG not long after they got PA's Pacific hub at SFO.

NW did SEA-HKG with 744, but then that was replaced by MSP-HKG.

I think they ran it for a number of years after the PA acquisition, but eventually transferred the right to SFO and ran daily doubles SFO-HKG. As I recollect, some event in Asia (illness or something) caused them to drop the second flight and it never came back after that event settled down.

I think it was the Asian financial crisis.

UA flew HKG-SEA-HKG till 1991 and was replaced by HKG-LAX-HKG

planemanofnz wrote:

I'm quite shocked that SEA - a very wealthy hub with large companies like Amazon and Microsoft - can't sustain a flight to HKG.

Perhaps an SQ 359 to SIN might work better, given that SQ and AS have recently signed a tie-up, and SQ and UA aren't 'friends'.

Cheers,

C.

As has been mentioned, Amazon employees travel in economy even for long-haul with very few exceptions, and Boeing enforces a very price-conscious approach that tilts towards ensuring their products are booked long-haul.That being the case, carriers need to look elsewhere (and to flows) to attract the lucrative high-yielding premium traffic.

winginit wrote:

planemanofnz wrote:

I'm quite shocked that SEA - a very wealthy hub with large companies like Amazon and Microsoft - can't sustain a flight to HKG.

Perhaps an SQ 359 to SIN might work better, given that SQ and AS have recently signed a tie-up, and SQ and UA aren't 'friends'.

Cheers,

C.

As has been mentioned, Amazon employees travel in economy even for long-haul with very few exceptions, and Boeing enforces a very price-conscious approach that tilts towards ensuring their products are booked long-haul.That being the case, carriers need to look elsewhere (and to flows) to attract the lucrative high-yielding premium traffic.

To make it clear, Boeing does fly their employees overseas in Business Class...unlike Amazon.

wedgetail737 wrote:

winginit wrote:

planemanofnz wrote:

I'm quite shocked that SEA - a very wealthy hub with large companies like Amazon and Microsoft - can't sustain a flight to HKG.

Perhaps an SQ 359 to SIN might work better, given that SQ and AS have recently signed a tie-up, and SQ and UA aren't 'friends'.

Cheers,

C.

As has been mentioned, Amazon employees travel in economy even for long-haul with very few exceptions, and Boeing enforces a very price-conscious approach that tilts towards ensuring their products are booked long-haul.That being the case, carriers need to look elsewhere (and to flows) to attract the lucrative high-yielding premium traffic.

To make it clear, Boeing does fly their employees overseas in Business Class...unlike Amazon.

True. Microsoft book into Business Class as well.

For Boeing though - they would, in a hypothetical example, book KE SEA-ICN-SIN if both segments were on a Boeing product versus a hypothetical SQ SEA-SIN nonstop on a 359. It's a notable and influential component of their corporate booking policy.

airzona11 wrote:

What is the PDEW?

Roughly 60.

LAXdude1023 wrote:

airzona11 wrote:

What is the PDEW?

Roughly 60.

That is a long flight for 60 that can easily 1-stop connect.

LAXdude1023 wrote:

airzona11 wrote:

What is the PDEW?

Roughly 60.

Wow, that is interesting! Thanks
Do you have the PDEW numbers for YVR and SFO for HKG? It would give me a better idea of what number would be needed to suppport five and six daily flights respectively.
Thanks