Originally Posted by
Rutan16
Refuelers Air China are already operating up to 3 daily flights into Heathrow right now the additional flight is CA616/617 and it’s unreported !
They are adding an overnight flight shortly.
The bilateral is already active however the real demand and route profitability isn’t actually present.
As said many times Chinese aviation is smoke and mirrors - indeed many of those carriers are little more than shells and the routes operated so heavily subsidised by the local/regional governments it would find many western companies in court for fraud !
They are operated directly as a result of a dictate from the highest authority of the PRC and the Chinese tax payer is paying big time - it’s pure politics at work as part of the Chinese Global domination statergy.
Makes the ME3 seem quite amateurish and it’s far more worrying imho.
HNA Group is built on these Shells and those routes by Capitol, Tianjin and Hainan to Changsha are stuffed with CAISSA tourists very low yielding and are little more than charters in reality. Below stairs plenty of boxes through.
What they are not doing is opening new UK export and business opportunities through.
Certain British politicians and indeed ministers need to take note imho !
Similarly I fully expect the China Southern route to Wuhan to disappear soon as Daxing opens especially as CZ Has been awarded the route over China Eastern.
China Eastern is for some reason less than favoured in Beijing -Well,its actually because Shanghai refuses to alllow Air China slots for already awarded routes there ( one of which is Manchester !)
To consider the genuine demand just look at Edinburgh numbers again without CAISSA tourists they would be in single figures !
Manchester has pretty much settled at load factors in the 80% range .
Rutan, Thanks for the quick reply, i fully understand now. Yes i know LHR is favoured by airlines, just seems a shame for the rest of the UK airports.