United Airlines will soon be the first U.S. carrier to offer daily, nonstop service between San Francisco and Guangzhou. This brings to six the number of daily nonstop flights United provides to China, including daily nonstop flights to Beijing from San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C.; and daily nonstop flights to Shanghai from Chicago and San Francisco. United is the first U.S. carrier to provide nonstop service to Guangzhou.

The San Francisco to Guangzhou service will begin in spring of 2008.

Some facts which make it an intelligent route decision:

California has more China-bound passengers than any other state; more than one-third of all U.S. travelers to China are from California.
California alone accounts for over 57% of all U.S. traffic to Guangzhou.
San Francisco metropolitan area has more traffic to Guangzhou than any other metropolitan area without nonstop service to Guangzhou.

United Airlines operates more than 3,600 flights a day to more than 200 U.S. domestic and international destinations. United is a founding member of Star Alliance, which provides connections for our customers to 855 destinations in 155 countries worldwide.
Source: CNN: Money http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU18925092007-1.htm

e-ticketing is simple and is, in many parts of the world, the preferred way of getting an airline ticket. On multiple sector journeys the old printed ticket may still be preferable, just. But there will probably be no printed airline tickets in, say, five years from now.

A straw in the wind is that Air China now has interline e-ticketing with Continental Airlines. So both Continental and Air China passengers can use a printed number — a single paperless, electronic ticket — for air journeys served jointly by the two carriers. This is not a breakthrough but more a continuation of a major development. For Continental joins a list of more than twenty other airlines Air China already cooperates with to offer interline e-ticketing service.

Air China is also working on implementing interline e-ticketing with the twenty airlines of Star Alliance before Air China becomes a full member of the alliance later this year. In fact, it only has four airlines to add before it has all of the Star Alliance.

All of which is very important if you are an international passenger. You can create your own itenerary on the Internet, print out the numbers — or just write them down. Then, at the airport, you show identification, give the number and, in exhange, you get a boarding pass. Inded, at some airports that also is automated and you just type your number into a machine and it prints out a boarding pass. At Schipol, in Amsterdam, the next logical step has been taken and you can also check in your own baggage. This all saves the airlines an immense amount of money and makes life easier for the passenger.

Mrs. Zhang Lan, Vice President for Air China, said, ‘Interline e-ticketing is a great convenience to our international passengers, and we are pleased to offer this useful service. Many passengers across our global network need to change airlines to reach their final destination, and the ease of a single interline e-ticket makes flying Air China that much more appealing and care-free.’

Checking through the Air China list you need to look for airlines with which it does NOT as yet have this arrangement. It is quicker. EasyJet would be one and RyanAir would be another. But there are not many. Air China is keeping well up with the times.
Source: eBlackboard

First the Daily Telegraph in London reported Cathay Pacific was preparing a bid for a major stake in China Eastern, China’s third-biggest airline.

Cathay, whose largest shareholder is the British-Asian trading group Swire Pacific and with which the writer had a long and intimate relationship, was expected to make an offer for a large stake in China Eastern Airlines, which is valued at about $4bn.

You may find this confusing because the news was that Singapore Airlines and Temasek, Singapore’s state investment vehicle, had agreed a deal to pay $923m for a 24% stake in China Eastern. Well, yes, the deal was ’set’. But not, as they say in some American business circles, ’set set.’

The combined offer of US$920 million has been approved by both China’s Cabinet and the China Eastern board which means it is ’set, but still requires the support of two-thirds of minority shareholders at a meeting in December which means it is not ’set set.’

Now, the Cathay Pacific offer is definitely off.

A Cathay Pacific representative told the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, ‘A proposed acquisition by Cathay Pacific Airways together with China National Aviation Holding of shares in China Eastern Airlines will not now proceed.The acquisition would have replaced that previously proposed by Singapore Airlines and a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.’

That sounds fairly definite.

There are still some complexities. Air China, the country’s largest state-owned carrier, is owner of more than 10% of China Eastern’s Hong Kong-listed shares. Under a complex deal struck last year Cathay with a 20% stake in Air China and also full control of Dragonair, a Hong Kong-based regional carrier with a well developed China network. Air China, its parent and another mainland company in turn received a 35% stake in Cathay. The two airlines also are joined together in a range of co-operative agreements and joint ventures.

The Financial Times reported: ‘The failed counter-bid for China Eastern will come as a huge disappointment to Li Jiaxiang, Air China chairman, who in a new book, In Route to Fly, criticises foreign investment in the country’s aviation sector. In his book, Mr Li warns that when overseas companies invest in Chinese airlines “domestic companies only get the money to develop, while foreign companies acquire the long-term occupation of China’s air resources”.’

Our illustration comes from a parade of Cathay Pacific hostess uniforms over the years. The one with a silly hat dates back to the writers’ time.
Source: Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times.

According to Boeing, China’s domestic air travel market will grow nearly fivefold in the next 20 years.

The annual growth rate is 8.1%. China is already the the largest commercial aircraft market outside the US.

The future is astounding. Randy Tinseth, vice-president of marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. said China will need about 3,400 new airplanes, worth $340 billion, over the next two decades, and the country’s fleet will nearly quadruple to 4,460 by 2026.

Tinseth also said air cargo will continue to lead the world and Chinese airlines are expected to add 300 freighters during the period, quadrupling its fleet.

Not everyone is in total agreement as to the figures although no one argues about massive growth. For example, Boeing thinks China will need only 340 regional jets by 2026 while China Aviation Industry Corp I (AVIC I) has forecast the country will need up to 900 feeder-line aircraft by 2025. And hopes that the majority will be the 70 to 100-seat ARJ21 and 50-seat MA60.

This area is not for Boeing. Randy Tinseth said, ‘The regional jet market is a relatively small segment in the global aviation market and there are many competitors. It is just a market we choose not to serve.’

It could, perhaps, have been put more elegantly but it gets its point across. Boeing will not be in competition with China’s ARJ21.
Source: Air Travel

China is likely to become a major battlefield for cargo plane makers in the next 20 years as the country’s air cargo sector maintains a more than 10%.

China Aviation Industry Corporation I (AVIC I) — one of the country’s leading aircraft manufacturers — said China would need 568 freight carriers by 2026, more than 10 times the size of the present fleet, as its air cargo industry continues to boom.

An AVIC 1 report says that by the end of last year, Chinese airlines were operating 46 freighters with a commercial payload of 2,300 tons,.

Liao Quanwang, vice-president of Aviation Industry Development Research Center of China, which is affiliated to AVIC I, said, ‘China’s air cargo market will maintain an annual growth rate of 10.5% in the next two decades, which is slightly higher than the growth rate of the passenger transport market.’

He said the fast growth is being fueled by China’s booming foreign trade, which provides abundant cargo to air carriers.

Boeing has said China’s air cargo market will continue to lead the world in the next two decades during which its fleet of cargo planes will more than quadruple in size.
Source: China Daily