Taiwan-based China Airways is planning on including a brand new path to the US. I can’t imagine how aggressive this market is changing into, and the way rapidly it’s occurring…
China Airways will fly to Seattle
As of July 14, 2024, China Airways will begin flying between Taipei (TPE) and Seattle (SEA). The flight will function with the next schedule, as flagged by AeroRoutes:
CI22 Taipei to Seattle departing 11:30PM arriving 7:50PM
CI21 Seattle to Taipei departing 1:40AM arriving 5:05AM (+1 day)
The 6,075-mile flight will function 5x weekly. The eastbound flight is blocked at 11hr20min and can function daily besides Wednesday and Friday, whereas the westbound flight is blocked at 12hr25min and can function daily besides Thursday and Saturday. This route will really mark a service resumption, as China Airways final operated this route again in 2008.
China Airways will use an Airbus A350-900 for the route, that includes 306 seats. This contains 32 enterprise class seats, 31 premium financial system seats, and 243 financial system seats. You may learn my evaluate of China Airways’ A350 enterprise class right here.
This new flight is now bookable by way of the top of the summer season schedule (October 27, 2024), and may quickly turn into bookable for the winter schedule and past. China Airways’ different locations in the US embrace Los Angeles (LAX), New York (JFK), Ontario (ONT), and San Francisco (SFO).
Taipei to Seattle is changing into very aggressive!
The extent of service development we’re seeing between Taipei and Seattle is fairly unprecedented. Presently EVA Air flies this route as much as 10x weekly, and has the market to itself. Nevertheless, this route is about to get a lot busier:
So in whole, the market will go from 10x weekly flights to 25x weekly flights. I’m curious, can anybody consider one other lengthy haul worldwide route that went from one airline to 4 airways over the course of a few months?
It is a market that EVA Air has been serving for fairly a while, and fairly efficiently, based mostly on how service has grown. Then we’ve recognized for a while that Starlux deliberate so as to add service to Seattle as effectively, however Delta beat Starlux to the punch (it’s anybody’s guess if that was a proactive aggressive response, or if the route was in Delta’s roadmap previous to that). And now China Airways needs in on the motion as effectively.
I’m curious if this market is ready to maintain 25 weekly flights with even half respectable yields. It appears to me like if there have been an airline that may scale back service to Seattle, it might be EVA Air, regardless of being the established participant.
That’s each due to the quantity of service the airline gives, plus EVA Air being in Star Alliance, so having restricted connectivity past Seattle. In the meantime China Airways is a part of SkyTeam (so has Delta connectivity), whereas Starlux has a partnership with Alaska.
Backside line
As of July 2024, China Airways will launch a brand new route between Taipei and Seattle, working 5x weekly. What’s exceptional is that this market goes from one airline to 4 airways over the course of simply a few months, which is a stage of service development we virtually by no means see. I’m very curious if this stage of service might be sustained.
What do you make of China Airways’ plans to launch Seattle flights? Do you assume the market can maintain 4 airways?
