North America DESTINATIONS
“We’re growing LA much more, too,” adds Pieper. “If you’re going to be number one carrier of choice in the US, LA and New York are top of the list.” One example is Los Angeles-Shanghai, launched last July. Delta is also building traffic at Salt Lake
City, its smallest hub, as a stop-off in place of Seattle for passengers arriving from Europe. This, Pieper says, will push more higher-yield passengers to Seattle and avoid connections where passengers retrace steps. United is also keen on transpacific, and will launch three routes from San Francisco, to Xi’an in May and Auckland and Hangzhou in July. China is a focus for United, as Hangzhou will be its 14th route there. American Airlines is also focusing on the west coast, adding 12 domestic routes from Los Angeles, including five a day to Seattle, plus Auckland this summer. This follows Los Angeles-Tokyo Haneda earlier this year and Los Angeles-Sydney in December, its first service to Australia since 1992. Four new routes to Cancun also began in March. There are two reasons for this west
coast build-up: more fuel-efficient aircraft (Boeing 787s) and joint ventures. United’s Auckland route is a revenue-sharing JV with Air New Zealand, Delta’s is with Virgin Australia and American Airlines’ alliance with Qantas was approved in February for five years with Australian competition authorities saying the US carrier was “unlikely” to have introduced these routes without a JV. Joint ventures have been a big boost to bottom lines, with the Delta/ Air France/KLM partnership generating an operating margin in excess of 20%. Transatlantic joint ventures in general are much further advanced, but this year Delta will launch Detroit-Munich, Minneapolis/ St Paul-Rome and Paris-Raleigh/Durham with its partners’ marketing support.
Transatlantic competition
Delta has built domestic feed into Seattle
Two things may have a bearing on what US carriers do on transatlantic routes in the future. Firstly, the ongoing battle with the Gulf airlines, which are launching a swathe of direct routes from the Middle East to key US hubs. In doing so, they are taking some of the connecting traffic that flies with US carriers to Europe and connects on their alliance partners to the Middle East, and particularly Asia. Complaints to Congress are being mulled over. Meanwhile, there is also the rise of budget long-haul carriers Norwegian and Wowair over the Atlantic. Norwegian has already made its mark at Gatwick and in Scandinavia with its US services, plus it launches Paris-US flights this summer. Legacy carriers dismiss Norwegian as a point-to-point operator but, with an order book of 30 787s, its long-haul fleet w
routesonline.com ROUTES NEWS 2016 ISSUE 3 41
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