KLM Air Asia
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: UK
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Probably use them to fly between Hong Kong and Taipei. As the Chinese don't like people flying from Hong Kong to Taiwan the 'Air Asia' part is window dressing to suggest some separation between KLM and the KLM Air Asia. In practice they are the same airline. BA used to operate the route as British Asia Airways.
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Sussex and Asia
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I would rather fly SLF with Air Asia than a KLM derivative with all the old Dutch cabin crew who can't be bothered.
Just a notch better than the Eastern cabin crew who like the airline were past their sell by date.
Just a notch better than the Eastern cabin crew who like the airline were past their sell by date.
To amplify Yellow Pen's point I believe that mainland China wouldn't allow airlines of certain countries to serve both it and Taiwan. Hence the need to set up a separate airline to serve TPE, although its planes could go just about anywhere outside China and were doubtless operated by the staff of the parent airline. Apart from British Asia Airlines, Japan Airlines had a Japan Asia Airlines subsidiary and there may have been others. Mandarin airlines was set up as a partially owned subsidiary of China Airlines of Taiwan which did not carry the national flag making it more acceptable to the PRC (more details on wikipedia). For some reason the restriction never applied to American carriers.
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Bali H'ai
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In the 1990's QANTAS used a Boeing 747SP in a similar Taiwan role and it also carried the QANTAS Asia logo. As it was not used every day in that role I got to fly many times in it on the Brisbane/Singapore route, QF51/52 as I recollect
