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Last week Hong Kong Airlines finally threw in the towel on its attempts to make its routes to/from the US economically viable as it canceled its route between Hong Kong and Los Angeles and, with that, ended its service to the US.
This move left the beleaguered airline with only a route between Hong Kong and Vancouver as evidence of its once big plans for transpacific travel and, as some suspected, a recent schedule update now shows this route is also facing an uncertain future.
Up until now, Hong Kong Airlines was set to operate a 5x/week service between Hong Kong and Vancouver for the peak summer period (it offers a 4x/week service right now) but, as of 8 November, the fifth weekly flight which was meant to operate between 18 June and 9 September 2020 has been removed from the schedules.
[HT: Routes Online]
For the time being this is what the summer schedule looks like…
HX080 HKG 12:30 – 10:10 YVR (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat)
HX081 YVR 12:00 – 16:50+1 day HKG (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat)
…but right now it’s hard to be anything but pessimistic about this route’s future.
The Hong Kong – Vancouver route is the airline’s last remaining route which operates outside of Asia and as long as the airline keeps making statements saying that it will “further adjust frequencies” to other destinations in its network (as it did last week) there’s going to be continued speculation about which routes are next in line to see reduced frequencies or to be cut altogether.
Clearly everyone should make decisions based on their own circumstances and the information they have to hand but, personally speaking, I wouldn’t be looking to book travel on Hong Kong Airlines across the Pacific right now – with Hong Kong Airlines retrenching and scaling back it’s operations on a weekly basis it’s hard to see the Vancouver service lasting much longer.
Hong Kong market has deteriorated due to the ongoing protests that are also getting more violent with each passing weekend. Business and Tourism have both gone down. Many airlines are scaling down operations to HKG (including AA) as it appears no end is in sight for these protests. I wouldn’t entirely blame the airline for the deteriorating outlook and future route strategy.