Cathay Pacific considering Barcelona flights

Media reports emanating out of Hong Kong have suggested that Cathay Pacific is looking to add two additional long haul destinations in 2015 as it looks to take advantage of niche markets that provide good O&D + onward feed potential. The two routes identified are Barcelona and Mexico City effective November 2015. No indication has been provided regarding frequencies per week nor which aircraft type would be used to operate.

Source: http://www.businesstraveller.asia/asia-pacific/news/cathay-adds-barcelona,-mexico-city,-reduces-chi

CX also officially disclosed that it will be reducing its services to ORD-Chicago from the on set of the IATA S15 season from the current 10 weekly to daily nonstop using a B77W.

Comments:

Launching BCN is a well thought out move, as demand to Asia from this city over the past three years has rapidly grown in particular to China, Seoul and Japan so CX is well positioned to take advantage of that + there is good amount of O&D traffic to the HKG hub. In addition, BCN is a mini hub for its fellow One World partner i.e. Iberia so CX can code share via BCN to Latin America + Europe to gain additional feeder traffic. Comparing demand between BCN and MAD to SE Asia in 2014 is as follows:

HKG - 59K vs 35K
NRT - 130K vs 90K
HND - 26K vs 16K
PVG - 79K vs 85K
PEK - 51K vs 55K
ICN - 90K vs 101K
MNL - 23K vs 29K
SYD - 22K vs 16K
MEL - 19K vs 17K
BKK - 40K vs 70K
SIN - 45K vs 12K
KUL - 10K vs 11K
SGN - 4K vs 5K
CAN - 11K vs 14K
HAN - 3K vs 5K

Total is 612,000 versus 561,000 in favor of BCN + more importantly HKG O&D traffic (the highest form of yield) is far greater for BCN along with the fact that cargo demand to/from BCN is higher than MAD to/from Asia. Therefore seeing how they launched MAN-HKG with 4 weekly flights initially, one can for see the same being adopted for HKG-BCN initially. But in all fairness, both BCN and MAD can easily be sustained by CX four to five times per week using a B77W or A359 in the future.