HNA Expansion
 

Virgin Australia sells stake to Chinese airline

http://abc.net.au/news/7461902

That deal flew right under CX's nose...

Wonder if it means HX will start flying to Oz from HK.

HNA is buying everything it can:

China?s HNA Agrees to Buy PAI?s Swissport for $2.8 Billion - Bloomberg

HNA in talks to buy stake in Air France?s Servair - FT.com

Interesting times we live in.

Only problem is that HNA Group is a huge Ponzi scheme. Guess it doesn't differentiate it from any number of mainland companies and maybe the they are trying to get too big to fail.

HX already flies to Oz...Cairns and Gold Coast

Pretty smart way to crack the China Aus market for a new player. Brand a couple of Virgin flights to HK and code share the rest on HNA jets. They have rights out of Beijing and Shanghai as well don't they?

And don't forget how that third runway will limit slots and expansion.......

...with the southerly runway closed in turn for its refurbishment and assuming the communists still not opening up their airspace.

Have you ever wondered if CX truly plans to expand at all? We replace 747s with smaller 777s and even smaller A350s while many of our competitors fly A380s and even a 747-8. The gates at the new HK terminal? I've never seen a single CX tail there, only those of growing competitors. Does CX even want to connect more pax through the HK hub? I wonder if they aren't willing to cede most of that traffic to the ME3, Singapore, and Tapei. Mainland connections only really make sense from the south. NAM connections only make sense for SE Asia and points west. The smaller 787s make connections through a big hub unnecessary for some medium sized cities which previously didn't have nonstop long haul services.

With all the ATC delays in HK, who really wants the fuss of a CX connecting flight? Perhaps CX sees itself as a niche player for the O&D (origin and destination) traffic to and from HK. That's where the yield is greatest. Connecting traffic has lots of competition from other hubs / carriers which reduces fares. The "safety premium" CX used to command because it brought in highly experienced, Western pilots is evaporating as we hire almost exclusively low time pilots with shoddy, if any, prior experience. I know I wouldn't want to train them. Frankly, I'm surprised so many are willing, with or without a training ban.

Air cargo probably has its best days behind it as ships become faster, more efficient, and with better environmental controls. CX does not have ground infrastructure like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. So we find ourselves competing with the lowest cost trash haulers from every God-foresaken corner of the globe. The only advantage we have in cargo is that we can put freight on a pax aircraft and get it where it needs to go quickly and reliably. But if a customer wants that with ground service, they put it on one of the big 3 above.

So what do we really have going for us? We aren't willing to compete with the bigger, faster growing international carriers. Our hub really doesn't work with poor ATC and limited Mainland airspace. Cargo is basically low yield for us because we haven't differentiated our product. LCCs are chipping away at our regional flights. Our service has taken a turn for the worse as employee morale is in the sh!tter. Where is the bright future? Is hoping for better an exercise in futility?

PS - The above is not an excuse for rampant cost cuts. Actually, just the opposite.

And that, CXORCIST, is the best summary of the current situation in a long while.

Cxorcist. A more damning indictment of our management (and the HK Gov/ATC) could not have been written. Excellent, and quite tragic. One can only conclude that the Swires want out (if you are going to sell, you don't invest even more capital that will probably never be recovered).

It's an Asian airline!
 

It may have been a western run airline in all the department's where it counts, but those days are truly over, Swire is just milking it dry because they can't sell it.

The big mainland carriers will just squeeze the life out of it, and Hong Kong along with it, face it Shanghai is where it'll all be happening. Hong Kong's a has been.

Trying to apply western practices to CX/HK will get you no where.

CX is lucky all the western wannabes still think it's a western airline.

@Avinthenews. Racist much?
Its funny because it seems to me Quatas, almost all of the US majors, and a fair amount of European carriers ran by "Westerners", have gone through multiple bankruptcies or near bankruptcy. SQ has been profitable for years, and so has CX. Something those Asians must be f-ing up big time to be profitable and no large scale layoffs for years. Tell me why you left the motherland to be here again?

Trash8mofo

Care to explain what parts are racist?

Looks like you're the racist.

STW,

It's funny when you have your little rants and just assume everything.

If you care to actually read, I was pointing out the fact that many expats complain about CX using expat reasoning which may have applied years ago when CX/Swire was a big expat boys club, but those days are over. Also please explain where I said western practices were any better?

Secondly does the 45% that swire owns pay and order all the aircraft do they? No they don't. Do you really think swire invests a lot in CX these days, how naive.