Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) is looking to route its Asian traffic increasingly through Seoul Incheon where it has a "fabulous" partner in the form of Korean Air (KE, Seoul Incheon) and away from Tokyo Narita, CEO Ed Bastian said at a Business Travel News conference.
Although at the time of Delta's merger with Northwest Airlines (NW, Minneapolis/St. Paul) in 2010 some 90% of the carrier's Asian traffic connected via Tokyo, this share has since gone down to just about a third. Bastian explained that Seoul offers connections to 80 destinations in Asia, while Tokyo allows for transfer to and from just a "handful" of airports in the region. Consequently, Delta's connecting traffic via Tokyo is "unsustainable" and "probably will be at zero at some point", Bastian added.
In Seoul, Skyteam airlines such as Korean Air, Delta, Air France (AF, Paris CDG), KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (KL, Amsterdam Schiphol), China Airlines (CI, Taipei Taoyuan), and Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta...
