Thursday, December 21, 2017

Cathay Pacific announces Washington DC nonstop

Cathay Pacific has officially announced that it will be launching new nonstop service to the U.S. capital city i.e. Washington DC effective 15SEP18 as the carrier looks to fill the gaps in its long haul route network where both demand and yields are high especially on the P2P market segment. 

It shall end up being the longest flight operated by CX across its network nonstop and will be flown using an Airbus A350-1000.

The schedule is as follows:

Days - 1/2/4/6

CX 860 Dep HKG 1835 Arr IAD 2220 
CX 861 Dep IAD 0115 Arr HKG 0510+1 

Cathay also disclosed the LOPA of its new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft cabin which is as follows:

Total seats 334 
46 business + 32 premium economy + 256 economy

The market demand over the past 1 year from IAD to key Far East Asian destinations that CX is targeting to fill its new IAD bound service are as follows:

PEK 136,000
PVG 21,000
CAN 8,000
HKG 23,000
BKK 56,000
SIN 28,000
MNL 49,000
TPE 27,000
KUL 11,000
CGK 13,000
ICN 119,000
SGN 44,000
HAN 6,000

Emirates announces London Stansted

Emirates has officially announced that it shall be launching its 10th daily nonstop flight into the London marketplace by adding a new service to STN-London Stansted airport.

The new daily flight will be operated using a B77W (3 class) effective 08JUN18 onwards scheduled as below:

EK 033 Dep DXB 0930 Arr STN 1410
EK 034 Dep STN 2110 Arr DXB 0705+1


Overall for London, EK flies 6 times daily to LHR + 3 daily to LGW and now daily to STN. 

Comments:

Personally speaking, this B77W should have been used to boost EK's Africa presence by operating daily DXB-FIH-BZV-DXB triangular service or DXB-FIH-DLA-FIH-DXB daily or DXB-FIH-LBV-FIH-DXB. They have enough capacity added into UK already whilst in Africa there are still many niche markets which are not yet served.