Disappointing but not surprising given the people the SNP rely on for support. I would have thought a sensible compromise could have been found thought, such as freezing the APD rate in Scotland for X years to mititage against any UK wide increases.

I wonder what it means for PIK as it seems a bit hypocritical to support one bit of the aviation industry and still insist there is a climate emergency or whatever this week's buzzword is .

Bad news to hear of Hainan but Im guessing competition from Emirates and Qatar has not helped, maybe this will prompt Cathay Pacific to start a Hong Kong route.

Or maybe cause CX to think twice about starting the route if competition from ME carriers is the cause.

With the amount of capacity that Qatar and Emirates are throwing at the Scottish market just now, I'd be surprised to see Cathay Pacific starting any time soon, or seeing any other far eastern long haul destination for that matter. My calculations suggest that in the high summer, there will be over 11,000 eastbound seats per week on EK/QR between Glasgow and Edinburgh alone (1 daily A380, 2 daily 77W and 10 weekly A359), and even about 9,500 seats in the lowest season (3 daily 77W, 1 daily A359). Granted, most capacity is to Dubai which is a very popular tourist destination in itself, but it's still a huge number of seats to fill for connections.

I think Cathay could have an OK chance of doing well given the number of destinations in mainland China that they serve, along with connection opportunities to Australia/NZ and I guess the UK historical links with Hong Kong, but I can't see the Scottish market being able to sustain that number of eastbound seats whilst providing sufficient yields for CX. Happy to be proved wrong though - I'd love to see them and I'd definitely use them again.

If you're heading for China/Japan surely the logical route is use Helsinki as your hub? Much more direct

Relax everyone... Airlineroute are now reporting EDI and DUB flights are back on sale beyond 1st September. Looks like it was a false alarm. As you were.

Well thats good news.

I agree. Here's the Google flights search result showing the Hainan EDI-PEK pricing - click on "Price Graph" and look at the jump from 1 Sep onwards. Yes, you can book, but only at a dissuasively high fare. This is not an airline looking to encourage forward bookings after the end of August.

Incidentally the same exercise for Dublin-Beijing is interesting. Here's the Google flights search for that. "Price Graph" this time suggests that Hainan is happy for you to continue booking on the Monday or Friday departure from Dublin until the end of October, just not the Tuesday or Saturday one... Does this mean that Dublin is being decoupled from Edinburgh?

Loganair added Bergen and Stavanger this week and Guernsey to start tommorow they had a cake and water arch all pictures on twitter.

Also it would be good to see Hainan decoupling from Dublin.

The whole HAINAN group are carrying a mountain of debt, sending a B789 to double drop Scotland and Dublin is not tenable, particularly given the loads.
OK it's a high profile route operated by a Chinese registered Dreamliner being offered with some decent fares to market but there are wayy more sensible routes to go from EDI if price is not the only thing on your mind.
They don't really "accidentally " do this, it feels like there's a fight going on for the aircraft used and someone else won, then may have lost, but it isn't growing at anything like fast enough to be a credible offering to anyone outside price conscious tourism.

The Monday and Friday ex DUB are to Shenzhen not Beijing.

Scotland is more "local", it needs an airport for both Edinburgh and Glasgow and so the market fragments badly and the comparison is lost. One "Central Scotland" airport would have United flying if not B772s then at least B787s with Delta surely flying A330s. As things stand, it's narrow body central with yields (slightly) diluted but more local options. Dublin dominates BFS, ORK and SNN in a way neither GLA/EDI can do in Scotland.

:ugh: Duh. You're absolutely right. Sorry! OK, forget my reference to decoupling - that therefore implies that the whole EDI/DUB-PEK is likely for the chop...

While I agree that what Scotland needs is a single, central belt airport, I dont think it would make much difference here. The main market for this flight is inbound Chinese tourists, many of which tend to book as part of a package tour. What airport they fly in to is irrelevant - as they'll be boarding a pre-booked bus and will be whisked off to the first of their many destinations - probably Edinburgh to start anyway, then on to other destinations around Scotland.

Any business travel, or Scottish tourists heading to Beijing will just be a happy extra, but certainly not the main market for this flight. As such, I don't think a single central airport would make much difference in this case.

As for the United / Delta examples - i'm not convinced. Look at Manchester, with its much larger catchment, yet it's still narrowbody central to the US. With the exception of the United flight which upgraded this year, it's all 757s. These aircraft are perfect for operating flights to the UK, freeing up widebodies for flights further in to Europe.