irevesmic
25th Sep 2004, 11:38
Does anyone think that introd of ultra long range point-to-point aircraft bring significant negative impact on major Asian air hub,eg. Changi Int airport?
Thanks for any thoughts..
akerosid
27th Sep 2004, 17:28
The only immediate negative I can think of is that (in the case of SIA) those airports which are overflown will lose out, but I suspect their loss will not be great - if there are major repurcussions at all. The US and Singapore have Open Skies, so adding a new nonstop doesn't mean SIA has to give up any routes.
For those countries which don't have Open Skies, it's probably going to mean they'll lose some flights, but I would think that this is more that outweighed by having a direct flight to your hub. At the end of the day, those en route stops were only intended to be just that and the ultimate goal must be to make sure that your hub is seen as THE hub. Whoever can do that most effectively and schedule its connections most effectively out of and into those hubs will, theoretically, win.
BUT ... for SIA, I see a major problem. Changi is the base for three of Asia's new low cost carriers - Valuair, Tiger and Qantas's Jetstar Asia. You can't build a hub operation on connecting traffic alone, so if these carriers are taking traffic away from SIA on the likes of SIN-CGK/KUL/BKK etc, I would think this will have a significant impact on SIA's hub operation at Changi.