Korean Air will launch daily Seoul Incheon to Newark flights with a Boeing 777-300ER, joining United and Air Premia on an increasingly competitive route.
Thanks for mentioning me, Ben! NJ has quite a huge Korean diaspora, and Air Premia has been doing well in this route especially with the cost-sensitive VFR demand.
Korean Air after the merger will have 4 daily ICN-JFK flights, and there's a rumor in Korea that they'll hand over 1 daily service to DL so that they fly the same route on their own. The same could happen in ICN-LAX as well.
Korean Air may not be a fancy airline, but their strengths are the route network, reliability and cargo. They're also considering other destinations in the US such as SAN, and I heard another in Florida(not MCO or MIA) but it didn't sound very realistic to me.
Yeah, that wouldn't appeal to me, either, but it may work well for passengers connecting at ICN.
I suspect KE will do well with load factor on this route but maybe not as well on yields. VFR traffic is generally notoriously low yielding and having Air Premia in the competitive mix likely won't help with that. OTOH, the NY/NJ area is a massive market and the points made about people in NJ and PA not wanting to drive to JFK is valid.
They do have night flights at JFK for connections, but it's not as late as this EWR flight. It's more because of the slot restrictions at EWR from 6am to 10:59pm. A newcomer at EWR can hardly get a slot during those hours.
That's right, cargo! Korean Air takes cargo business as serious as pax.. or even more. Their cargo revenue is a half of the pax sector, but the profit may be bigger.
12:50am-5:10am jfk-icn 77W
1:00am-5:15am ewr-icn 77W
2:00am-6:05am jfk-icn 380
11:45am-4:30pm jfk-icn 77W
1:20pm-5:50pm jfk-icn 380
8:25am-10:00am icn-jfk 77W
10:00am-11:10am icn-jfk 380
7:30pm-9:00pm icn-jfk 77W
9:05pm-11:00pm icn-jfk 380
10:00pm-11:00pm icn-ewr 77W
This appears to be cluttered with overlap. No flights from NYC-ICN between 2:00am and 11:45am and no flights from ICN-NYC between 10:00am and 7:30pm (this glaring hole makes seoul-south america connections more lengthly). NYC-ICN at 10:00am and ICN-NYC at 4:00pm would fit well here.
The outbound (westbound) is a fairly common setup, especially on the Asian carriers. I prefer daytime flights personally, but the timings make sense - you can get in a full day of work if you're local, pretty close to one with a late afternoon/early evening first leg if you need to connect, and then sleep most of the way over.
The inbound, though? Yeah, no thanks. A midnight departure and a midnight arrival, with the FAs probably demanding that the window shades stay down the entire way? That's a recipe for days of jet lag.
This will be very exciting for the Korean diaspora in Bergen County. anecdotally, I know a lot of Korean friends that are loyal to Delta/SkyTeam in that area who trudge all the way to JFK, but would be happy to fly out of EWR. I'm sure KE is collecting passenger address data and knows that.
I expect they'll fly out of EWR Terminal B though, since A has no CBP and C is dominated by Star Alliance. Terminal B is pretty rough...
Korean Air will actually be adding two additional daily flights to New York (JFK) from December 17, 2026 so between then and the Newark launch, Korean Air will fly four times daily to the New York area, whereas once Korean Air launches Newark flights, it will fly fives times daily, which is actually unprecedented for Korean Air as it has never operated this many flights to the New York area in its history. It will trail British Airways which has the most flights to the New York area of any foreign airline but Korean Air will hold that title for ultra long-haul flying (as normally, it would be impossible to have that many flights for an ultra long-haul due to slot scarcity and extreme distances, even Emirates has many flights but with a catch: only two are nonstop while the others are fifth-freedom routes). Can you please update that on this article to reflect this?
Note: Here are the flights that Korean Air will fly to the New York area both after the merger and Newark launch (All 777s here are 277-seater version):
KE83: 08:25 - 10:00 777-300ER
KE81: 10:00 - 11:10 A380
KE85: 19:30 - 21:00 777-300ER
KE87: 21:05 - 23:00 777-300ER (Dec 17 - Mar 27) ; A380 (Mar 28-onwards)
KE97: 22:00 - 23:00 777-300ER (May 22-onwards)
As I have said for years, KE as well as its partner DL have been in a very long waiting period for approval of the OZ merger and the ability to add new flights.
I believe this is the first new or readded city for KE in years. It is very likely that KE will shift one or more flights from LAX and JFK to DL as they add new flights; KE will most likely be the carrier to add flights to new markets.
The JV covers more than just US-S. Korea and DL is adding flights to other parts of E. Asia.
The DL pilot agreement requires DL to add flights on its own metal as KE converts OZ flights to KE..
KE is in process of doing that but has not, IIRC, done it for US flights.
So… does this mean DL will finally open an a350 base at JFK soon, and actually start flying to E. Asia from NYC? Or, they just gonna have KE and others do all the work for them?
I expect DL will have JFK to Asia flights on the A350 and possibly also from BOS.
DL like other US airlines does not base planes at specific hubs; they do have pilot bases and neither BOS or JFK is an A350 pilot base but of course both are FA bases.
I expect JFK will have ICN flights as well as to other regions; if only one or two flights from JFK or BOS, it can be staffed by pilots from other bases.
That's not even close to being true.
Los Angeles County has 3 times the number of direct Korean immigrants, that Bergen County does (146,000 vs 48,000 for year ending 2025).
Add in 1st-generation Korean Americans, and the disparity jumps to 4x.
Also, Orange County, CA (118,000) is larger for Koreans as well.
Not if the objective is Asian-side connections.
That timing allows connections from/to every single thing Korean flights into/out of Incheon, both morning and evening.