Cathay Pacific in China

[Richard]

Well, the two Hong Kong-based airlines Cathay Pacific (CX) and Dragonair (KA) have been duking it out in the courts over CX's flying rights to China. KA, is currently the only HK-based carrier that flies to China. CX now wants to fly a couple of daily services to Beijing and Shanghai. KA doesn't want this to happen. This being for obvious reasons, CX is a much better airline and it's almost certain that they'd earn big bucks if they were to get flying rights. This could potentially threaten KA.

CX has a 13 percent stake in KA (I think) and in 2002 CX made a very handsome net profit.

Well what are your views?

C'mon Indian Airlines, Geoffrey, and hkgspotter among others....You hafta have some opinion on this....

[Richard]

Sorry. Moderators, can you please delete one of the two same topics I posted. Yeah, I kinda pressed submit twice....

[Geoffrey]

And they were arguing on the court last week. The KA lawyer was even absent for 45mins for unknown reasons and at last left for Cathay's lawyer being rude to him!
Anyway, the reason that KA doesn't want Cathay to take the routes is KA relies on the route's profit to compensate deficits on other routes. If Cathay flies these routes, it will not only a "probable" threat to KA, but is a certain threat to Dragonair.

[Geoffrey]

Sorry I made it double.. I thought the first time did not make it

[LH 340-600]

Cathay will get these routes sooner or later.
And then Dragonair will surely have a hard time.

Why is it so difficult for them to get the rights for these routes?

[indian airlines]

Definitely Cathay. They are a superb airline. They were voted best airline of the year this year. They are definitely more capable of providing better service to passengers travelling into mainland China.

I think Cathay has also been partially foolish. Thay had monopoly over air transport to China, before thay gave it up to DragonAir. Why did they do that??? It was a bad move on their part.

Anyway, what has happened has happened; now Cathay should be allowed to resume flights to mainland China, alongside DragonAir if need be.

[Geoffrey]

It is hard for Cathay to gain the right because the Hong Kong government had established a policy that only one airline will fly a particular route. That's why Cathay had to quit China's market if Dragonair flies it. Now Cathay had give in to let Dragonair fly HKG-TPE route, and hoping to see they can fly the mainland routes.