Originally Posted by
Skipness One Echo
Good point, but the ME3 are a particular kind of flag carrying pseudo-political state entities. With more money than God they've captured market share going East in a massive way from the old legacies with their multi stop nightmare slogs across Asia. The flip side of that is that there's a host of places that might otherwise have non stop service to MAN who are now better served with a one stop option via DXB/AUH/DOH.
So in terms of variety, not ideal but better in terms of volume I think.
Good point Skipness, my view on the MEB3/4 is a bit chicken and egg. They are very good at providing tangible proof that a certain market exists, but they also act to stifle direct services.
As noted above, BKK is the classic example. One of the highest unserved city pairs on earth, but yield remains the issue due to the one stop fares of EK, EY and QR.
It's not all bad news, as CX at HKG has shown. I expect the coming years will see some more CX type success stories on routes like PVG, TYO, ICN - and possibly BOM, BKK, KUL - each of which have major one stop flows from MAN and/or significant surface leakage.
The harder nuts to crack willl be Africa and South America.