The coming summer could see unusual traffic patterns for Cathay Pacific‘s traffic to and from the United States. In a regulatory filing with the US Department of Transportation the carrier suggests it may operate flights via Taipei, as well as a Vancouver option, to move travelers between the US and Hong Kong in the coming summer.
The Vancouver routing to JFK Airport in New York City is not entirely new, though the proposed approach is very different from before. In the past the carrier operated the flight on a schedule that allowed passengers to easily fly on same-plane service via Vancouver or to take either leg individually. The proposed times on the new schedule see the aircraft sit for 12-20 hours.
That is not a schedule conducive to carrying passengers via Vancouver for the full trip. It may, however, work better for crew timings to operate the flights on that schedule.
It is also worth noting that the carrier applied to operate via Vancouver during part of the 2022 summer. That never materialized as filed. And there are no guarantees this one does, either. One significant difference is that Cathay appears keen to carry local traffic between Vancouver and New York with the proposed timings.
The Taipei option is listed for traffic from both Boston and JFK, though it very much appears to be an option, not a certainty. The filing indicates that some “US-HK passenger services might make technical stops at TPE airport without 5th freedom traffic carriage.”
Three of the four planned NYC trips offer the TPE tech stop option in the filed plans. The Boston service also might stop in TPE on the return to Hong Kong.
In each case, the additional tech stop also dramatically changes the departure time from the US, though the arrival times in Hong Kong are close to the same. From Boston, for example, the nonstop return would depart at 1:45am and arrive in Hong Kong at 5am the following morning. With the Taiwan stop, however, the flight would depart at 7:05pm, arriving in Hong Kong at 3:50am two days later, including the hour gas-and-go in TPE.
Ultimately this means an aircraft would be on the ground in Boston for nearly 21 hours rather than just over three. Similar timings are seen in the proposed JFK trips. That would dramatically and adversely impact the aircraft utilization and the number of planes required to operate each service.
The TPE routing is approximately 200 miles shorter than flying nonstop to HKG. That’s not much, and Cathay Pacific has resumed using Russian airspace after a brief hiatus, so it is not clear why the tech stop would be favorable to the airline. But the option exists in the filing.
Cathay also proposes to operate 3x daily to San Francisco, 3x or 4x daily to Los Angeles, and 1x daily to Chicago-O’Hare during the summer season.
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Cathay is flying in Russian airspace? That means that they’re *paying* Russia overflight fees for doing so. That’s not right.
Yup… https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/cx831#2f20524e
Many airlines still are. The ME3, Air India, Chinese airlines, and more.
Interestingly only for North American flights (not including west coast). They aren’t doing so for European flights even though the routing is longer and adds time. I’m wondering if it’s out of necessity as their North American flights sometimes had to do fuel stops when they were avoiding Russian airspace
I think it also has to do with the fact that the European routes *can* operate without the overflight, even though it is longer than normal. The US east coast routes really would struggle to run nonstop without the Russian overflight.
Not that it justifies the decision, but it certainly could help explain it.
It’s interesting, if you try to pull the file now, it says “Withdrawn per request of Submitter”. I wonder if it was an inadvertent premature filing?
My guess is they withdrew the filing because it is no longer required. On Thursday the DOT changed its policies and morning stopped requiring such filings: https://twitter.com/WandrMe/status/1628759849298272256.
Also, here’s an archived copy of the filing: https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.wandr.me/DOT-OST-2017-0009-0045_attachment_1.pdf
On a separate but related note, does anyone happen to have anything on Hainan’s proposed resumption of service to Boston? They supposedly made a regulatory filing back in January for service to Beijing and Shanghai, and Logan Airport’s Wikipedia listing gave a Feb. 17 start date. The listing is still up, but it’s not possible to book a Boston flight on Hainan’s website. It seems safe to assume it fell victim to politics, but I’ve seen no formal announcement. Anybody know what gives?
My understanding is that the airlines had to file, but unless the DOT objected the operations were approved. So I don’t think it was politics necessarily that killed that resumption. I’d assume it has more to do with weak demand as the China market recovery is softer than many expected.