Shenzhen Airlines

[Coathanger16]

Yet another Chinese airline launching flights to Heathrow...

https://www.businesstraveller.com/b...airlines-opens-bookings-for-new-london-route/

Amazing to think that a little over a year ago Heathrow had just 4 routes to China:

Beijing
Shanghai
Guangzhou
Hong Kong

That list has now grown to 12! Including the 4 above, there are now or will be flights to the following:

Qingdao
Sanya
Wuhan
Changsha
Shenzhen
Chongqing
Tianjin
Xi'an

Clearly shows there is plenty of demand for flights between the UK and China. Lets just hope some of these new flights also come to airports outside of London...

 

[Coathanger16]

Before

After

 

[thunderchild]

Clearly shows there is plenty of demand for flights between the UK and China. Lets just hope some of these new flights also come to airports outside of London...

Another consideration is the fact the secondary Chinese cities are pretty much free from the ME3, TK and Oman so the Chinese can have all the traffic to themselves.

 

[rutamkrd]

Coathanger and others on here,second and third tier Chinese routes have a level of subsidy unheard of in the West for thirty plus years. They are stuffed with middle class Chinese tourists on organised and marshalled excursions, and heavily influencing the financial mess that is HNAs bottom line.Profiable they are not in the main.

At the same time they are an intrinsic element of Xi Jinpings dictates on Regional growth targets and that the many provincial government agents targets must achieve.

They are not about moving goods into China or indeed really about any inward trading opportunities at all

No it’s all about Han Chinese global projection and the political aspirations of the Communist Party of China.

That said there also tensions within the country with those provincial agencies attempting to out bid each other.

An example of those tensions can be found in Shanghai where the CAAC PREFERRED PREMIER CARRER Air China continues to be thwarted by local bureaucrats blocking slot awards,in protection of China Eastern and to counter the new Beijing Airport seems to be going to China Southern as Primary choice.

Central government agencies really have it in for China Eastern imho.

BTW one of the blocked routes is Shanghai-Manchester for which Air China have route authority.

Nothing in Chinese aviation is all it seems on the surface.

It’s very far from a western liberal free market and all strings continue to be pulled by the CAAC and those many colours are somewhat of a smoke and mirrors.

Indeed HNA has several regional carriers pecisely to take advantage of the local government subsidy regime.

There are dozens of these shell airlines across the four main groupings today.

And although the one airline one route mantra is supposedly being eased look and watch out it really isn’t .

Daxing will be dominated by China Southern domestically they will get a few scraps of the table including London but expect some of those second city routes to quietly disappear again.

Air China gets the best in ALL cases .

 

[Brum X]

Shenzhen is being restored - 5 weekly (except Tue/Thu) from March 26

https://twitter.com/x/status/1617597574554189849

 

[jfy1999]

@Brum X I hope you don’t mind but I took the step of editing your post so that readers can still know what the Twitter post referred to if the account is ever closed (I know it seems unlikely that we lose Sean’s account, but we have lost a couple of airline - related Twitter accounts in the past )