Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific & Dragonair have announced that they will be increasing their flights to India by adding 27 weekly flights to the country all flown nonstop from HKG. The main highlights are as follows :

BOM - increased from 4 weekly to 10 weekly flights i.e. 3 weekly terminators HKG-BOM-HKG using a 2 class A 333 + 4 weekly HKG-BKK-BOM-DXB using a 2 class B 773A + 3 weekly HKG-BOM-DXB using a 2 class B 773A. CX will now fly BOM-DXB-BOM daily with full 5th freedom traffic rights using a 2 class 410 seater B 773A. This flight increase comes into effect from 31st March.

DEL - increased from 4 weekly to double daily A 333s effective 30th March.

BLR - new daily nonstop service using an A 333 of Dragonair effective 1st May.

MAA - new 4 weekly nonstop service using an A 333 effective 1st June.

Analysis :

Many of you upon reading this might be thinking why is CX sending KA aircraft to fly the all important HKG-BLR route when it could have instead used KA's A 333 dedicated for BLR for the second daily DEL flight. One should not underestimate the business acumen of CX's management board as they are astute students of the game. FYI, KA's new J class product on board its A 333s seats 30 having a seat pitch of 63 inches and a seat width of 27 inches. Yes 27 inches which means that its J class seats are wider than most airlines first class seats!

All of CX's new flights to India connect very well in both directions with their Japan, China, LAX, SFO, YVR and TPE flights in both directions which is essential for the routes to be profitable.

Another very important element which AI, 9W, EK, IT & IC have to worry about is that CX will be flying daily the high density BOM-DXB-BOM route with a 2 class 410 seater B 777-300A. By using such a big aircraft (capacity & cargo wise) for this key route, it will definitely give few headaches to the above mentioned airlines for market share control purposes.