Air China’s strategy for maintaining US flights

Air China doesn’t seem willing to completely give up US flights. The airline currently flies to six US destinations — Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New York JFK, San Francisco, and Washington.

The airline has filed with the US Department of Transportation to request the right to operate a total of just seven weekly frequencies to the US, but those would include four US cities. Air China wants to fly the following for a period of 180 days, using Boeing 777-300ERs:

• 4x weekly from Beijing to Los Angeles to San Francisco
• 3x weekly from Beijing to New York JFK to Washington

As the airline describes it, this is intended to maintain essential air connectivity between the US and China in the most economical way.

That’s an interesting approach, but it’s important to also point out the potentially huge logistical hurdles here. There are reports of immigration in the US taking six hours in some cases for those arriving from Asia (even those not coming from China).

I would assume passengers would be screened at the first US port of entry, rather than at the final destination, in which case the scheduling seems very difficult.

It’ll be interesting to see if this permission is granted, and if so, how the route does operationally.

This is a very different strategy than China Eastern is taking, for example, as they’re just suspending select routes and frequencies.

Bottom line

Air China seems to be doing everything they can to avoid cutting US flights altogether. I have to give them credit for coming up with an innovative strategy that allows them to maintain service without operating their entire network empty, though at the same time the logistics here seem really challenging.

If Air China does amend their routes as proposed, I’ll be very curious to see what kind of delays these flights face…

What do you make of Air China’s strategy for maintaining US flights?