China Eastern Airlines, that country's #3 carrier, announced Friday it was applying for membership in the SkyTeam airline alliance, aiming for entry in mid-2011.
SkyTeam already has the country's largest airline, China Southern, as a member. China Southern's key hubs are at Guangzhou and Beijing; China Eastern's main hub is at Shanghai. SkyTeam also includes Korean Air with its large Seoul hub, Delta - with its strong Transpacific network and Tokyo hub, and will be bringing Vietnam Airlines and Taiwan's China Airlines into the network shortly.
The potential value in this action is very strong - Shanghai is not just a major financial center, but also a great destination for family tourism - and the new international airport at Pu Dong (PVG) is well designed with plenty of room to grow and no noise or zoning issues. Shanghai has built a magnetic-levitation train connecting the airport with the central city, and is extending it out to the older domestic airport, Hongqiao (SHA).
The issues that SkyTeam has to work on to make this move a success include:
- China Eastern's limited international reach - only a few routes to Europe and Australia, a daily nonstop to Los Angeles, 5-per-week service to Vancouver, and 4-per-week service to New York JFK. The carrier has only a small fleet of A340 and A330 long-range craft (and a few old A300-600R mid-range birds); 787s are on order but only enough to replace the older A340s and A300s, and maybe get Vancouver and New York to daily frequency.
- The timing of the North American flights is not convenient for connections on either end. The LAX and Vancouver flights leave those cities after midnight; arrivals are too late to make any West Coast or mid-continent flights. The JFK flight arrives mid-afternoon and leaves at 4:35 pm; OK for Florida connections but not timed well for other traffic.
- Right now, Shanghai's Pu Dong airport handles the international flights; while Hongqiao takes the domestic runs. Hongqiao is certainly more convenient for the city's residents and businesses, but the two airports are as far apart as Baltimore and Washington-National ... farther than JFK and Newark, or Houston-Intercontinental and Hobby. Maybe when the maglev train is complete, shuttling between the airports will take only a half-hour, but today, that journey will run at least a couple hours. And you still have to re-clear security.
So, in the next two years (since most of you in the adoption process will only be getting to China then...), SkyTeam needs to convince its members:
- To re-time its North American (and Australian) services to arrive Shanghai in early afternoon instead of dinnertime. Doing this also pushes the arrival times into North America early enough to clear Customs and make connections to inland cities.
- To build several banks of domestic connecting flights from Pu Dong
- Delta already flies a daily 777 run to its megahub in Detroit, but it doesn't connect with families leaving Guangzhou. (China Southern only flies to Hongqiao from Guangzhou at that time of day.) Again, adding some early morning Pu Dong domestic flights would allow adoptive families to make an easy connection; Delta doesn't need to change the eastbound flight times by even a minute...
- Though, with better feed from inland Chinese cities, Delta might want to consider adding a few additional nonstops to major hubs - PVG to Minneapolis, Seattle, and Atlanta in that order
It's an interesting time to be watching the travel business. We'll keep you informed as to your Transpacific options on weninchina.com's flight planning page, updated every quarter. A fresh update was loaded yesterday!
(Photo courtesy PhillipC via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0 license)
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