China Airlines to fly Airbus A350 on Sydney-Taipei route

@Viscount:

@boeingmannn:

I was talking only about Sydney. I searched on Google and CI51 currently operates only 4 times weekly (I checked on Flightradar24 as well); do they usually increase it to daily during the Southern Summer?

Kudos to them for trying, and reminds me of when CZ went from a handful of flights to double daily on SYD-CAN.

@afloskar:

@FLX1

@afloskar:

I am a bit surprised that they opt the A350 to SYD first rather than BNE consider that we have a larger Taiwanese population here. CI is the only airline servicing SYD-TPE so they have the monopoly, compare to BNE where BR also servicing the route. By coming to BNE first they will have the advantage of offering a more superior product than BR (who still use outdated A330 angled lie flat at 2-2-2) and hopefully secure more of the Taiwanese market here, and potentially offer the best trans-tasman J product.

@Michael Kao:

One of the reasons that Sydney is the first to double the frequency is because that starting from December 2017, new route from Taipei to London Gatwick (direct) will be served by CI which means Australians and Europeans will have more options and of course compared to many airlines, CI has very competitive price.

2tris:

Actually they do. He has always seemed to know before hand.. BNE is highly competitive compared to SYD.. Eva air is just now putting on a fight for BNE route against CI. Offering the same cabin quality is not enough for CI. Eva has the advantage by having a 5 star skytrax rating and a better safety history which means a bit to some people. That is why. Plus TPE-ALK is not on their radar. Its not just the plane type but also the fact that CI lacks viable frames to do the flight.

AKL does not have have to be a direct flight because any other airline will require a 1 stop routing. AKL-BNE-TPE on a single flight number will always have the advantage time wise than say an AKL-HKG-TPE (probably the only other option close timing wise) routing.

"BNE is highly competitive compared to SYD.. Eva air is just now putting on a fight for BNE route against CI. Offering the same cabin quality is not enough for CI."

That was exactly my point. It is highly competitive yet they are offering the same cabin quality to BR on their BNE route. If BR brings in a 77W before CI, then they've lost the mark!

@tris:

Its not difficult to understand what I am saying. CI is the dominant player so they have more market share. BR has not been focused on this until recently. If all is equal then BR will gradually take that market share also they have overall better history.

Yes I know they are getting the B787. Whether it is a B777 or B787 makes no difference only that it is coming and it will be fully flat with better IFE. So yes CI does need to jump this. Also They dont need to wait 18months. There are many being delivered this year and they will have a total of 13 frames by April 2018 (under 12 months) so they will have the option of putting the A350 on the BNE route.

"CI still intends to service AKL and CHC"

CI is not from mainland China (PRC). Its from Taiwan (ROC). AKL does not have a big Taiwanese community as BNE plus AKL is definitely not as big as SYD population wise or have anywhere as much business in comparison.

Mainland Chinese are limited in transferring through Taiwan without a visa issued by PRC. The only option for Mainland Chinese is to fly out of HKG (So why not just go CX then) and some cities far inland (Chongqing is one of the few) where currently CI does not have the rights to fly there to Taipei. BR was able to get a couple of flights per week though.

Lets just say anything between Taiwan and Mainland China is complicated. So CI cannot benefit from the Chinese community much currently.

So back to the original question. If the mainland Chinese airlines only send their 787's/777's weekly but have the huge market from China to fill up their planes (Over 1 billion people) then Taiwan being just 24 million will really struggle with loads putting an A350 direct to AKL.

@tris06:

Also surprisingly, there is a large Taiwanese population here in BNE that came through AKL! These are the people that originally migrated to NZ in the 90's, got the NZ citizenship, got their university diploma but can't get a job in NZ! So many of them migrated to Australia and BNE seem to be their place of choice (I guess house in SYD/MEL is too high?). My bro in law is one of those. There are many other of my friends are those. They still have family and friends back in AKL so they go back to NZ as often as to Taiwan. 

@crazybenjamin:

It's not going...

In Melbourne, China Airlines uses Qantas Lounge anyway which will be similar to Brisbane and Sydney if you are on QF code. In Sydney, China Airlines uses SkyTeam Lounge.

I have seen Qantas members being able to use the QF lounge in BNE for this codeshare flight. In Taipei though I think they are unable to use the CI lounge. No idea if CX will let them in on the codeshare.