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China Eastern Airlines


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Aviation Week is stating that China Eastern will serve IAH-Shanghai starting as early as this June. No news of type of aircraft or how many weekly flights there will be, but IAH is getting another international carrier. Likely will be 3-4 times a week on a 773 according to rumors. 

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This is good news.  Shanghai (and places nearby) are interesting to visit.  Moreover, the route would provide a shorter connection to other places in S and SE Asia than via Tokyo or Beijing.  I've used Taipei in the past, which is fine, but it would be nice to have some additional price competition, also.

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  • 2 months later...

US-China civil air transportation protocol limited 180 pairs of flights per week for Chinese carriers and 160 per week for US carriers for flights to/from PEK, PVG and CAN (China zone 1). Currently all slots on Chinese side had been taken by CA (63), MU (49), CZ (35) and HU (33). all 49 MU flights are departing from PVG, and it has 14 SFO, 14 JFK, 7 LAX, 7 ORD, and 7 HNL. China Eastern need to reallocate its flight if they want to land in another US destination. The most likely option is to reduce PVG-HNL from 7 to 3/4, and reallocate to IAH.

 

On the US side, there is a couple of them available, and I think all the left frequencies are designated to CAN per the protocol (I might be wrong). However I don't think US carrier would like to explore that market, since they have developed a good HKG (very close to CAN) market already. Currently not all approved routes are fully utilized. HA filed 7 weekly HNL-PEK although it only runs 3 per week now. AA got DOT approval for PEK-LAX last year but haven't be able to get a time slot in PEK. I doubt they will get it until the new Beijing airport completed in 2019 or 2020. DL has been considering resuming ATL-PVG for a while and the solution they went is to end PVG-NRT 7 weekly and replaced by PVG-ATL. This will begin in 2018

 

If any of the carriers would like to add additional route to PVG/PEK/CAN, I think the best option would be IAH-PVG, if they could figure out a way, or just wait for the next round of negotiation. From another perspective, MU only has 20 777's, and to better utilize those they would put them in routes between China-Australia, and China-Europe since those routes are just more profitable than China-US routes. They will start getting 787-9's next year, and let's see what they could do from there.

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  • 3 months later...
On 11/5/2017 at 10:29 PM, wxman said:

So is this route still a thing or no?

 

No for China Eastern, unless the new round of protocol negotiation kick off soon... doubt this is one of the topic Trump and Xi will discuss today in Beijing.

 

But this route is possible if United like to drop their 3 weekly PVG-GUM route (approved for 3 weekly, but currently operates 2 weekly). This route is a total loss so far, with less than 20%, but United has to keep it. When market proves, and if UA want to add a line to Asia from IAH, I believe PVG-IAH is the best choice. The new ATL-PVG route from Delta is under a similar situation, they have to drop the NRT-PVG route to exchange to ATL-PVG.

 

One other concern is frequency. People are saying it is really not efficient or profitable to have a US-Asia route less than daily. I am not sure why, but since United only has 3 weekly slots on GUM-PVG, that may be another reason.

 

The new airport in Beijing, and the expansion at PVG and CAN is going smoothly. With more day time flight slots, the China-US market may see another boom.

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