Korean Air, Asiana to be hit as gov't reviews tax exemption ch-aviation PRO exclusive

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...

Qatar Airways (QR, Doha Hamad Int'l) will launch a new route from Doha Hamad Int'l to Da Nang on December 19, 2018, becoming the maiden airline to offer long-haul services from the Vietnamese leisure destination, ch-aviation schedule analysis has revealed.

The Qatari carrier will operate the route 4x weekly using a B787-8 equipment.

According to the ch-aviation capacity module, Da Nang currently sees 716 weekly departures on domestic and regional routes to South-East and East Asia. The largest operators at the airport are VietJetAir (VJ, Hanoi) and Vietnam Airlines (VN, Hanoi) with a 27.2% and 26.2% market share by capacity, respectively.

Da Nang sees limited widebody operations, exclusively on the route to Seoul Incheon, which is operated by Asiana Airlines with B747-400s and A330-300s; by Korean Air with B777-300s; and by Jin Air with B777-200s.

Qatar Airways already serves Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in Viet Nam directly from Doha. It also operates to the former...