China Airlines Launching Seattle Flights In July 2024

So optimistic when it comes to Delta even when it flies in the face of reality. As per your favorite DOT data, Alaska had ~50% pass. share at SEA from Oct ‘22-‘23 vs Delta’s 20%.

The US Taiwanese community is small w/ most estimates at ~500k but very heavily concentrated - 50% are in CA and another ~25% in NYC. LA, SFO, and NYC already have multiple daily nonstops to Taipei. The biggest unserved markets are: Dallas, Houston, and DC (none are Delta hubs).

Taiwan isn’t becoming a major transit hub, tourist destination, or business center in the next year - so when capacity goes up 2.5x overnight, it’s obvious it’s an airline turf war. Given China flights are re-ramping (tons of routes announced this week), Asia is coming back.

Delta wants to prevent Alaska from gaining any traction to Asia - there probably was opportunity for 1 more daily flight than the current EVA frequency from Seattle. Starlux identified that and looked to leverage its partnership w/ Alaska. If the Hawaiian merger goes through, Alaska will have service to Japan and South Korea. Now how to avoid that? Flood the market with capacity and take losses to force Starlux out, b/c if Alaska gets that traction the path for Delta in SEA looks bleak.

What happened to the data? The conversation isn't about Delta's operations everywhere it's about Seattle. SEA expects ~50M passengers in 2024 of which ~90% are domestic.

The latest data from the Port of Seattle in International market share:
Delta: 28%
Alaska: 18%

Domestic:
Alaska: 58%
Delta: 24% (btw will start serving Dallas in July, only serve Dulles in DC, don't serve Houston - that's ~10% of the Taiwanese pop. that's the supposed to help the feed excluding the 75% that already have multiple daily nonstops)

So Delta serves Amsterdam (the only carrier), Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, London, and Shanghai from SEA over Alaska yet only has 10% more international pass. share? We also have data on the annual Amsterdam pass. count (~250k) and the Tokyo Haneda count that is only shared w/ ANA (~225k). If you assume Delta has 50% pass. share to Haneda, those 2 routes account for ~8% (~30%) of Delta's 28% intl. share.

So obviously Delta is likely getting dominated by Alaska in service to Mexico and Canada as well. Alaska just joined OneWorld in 2021 and the only advantage in SEA Delta has over it is those Europe and Asia routes. It's obvious why Delta is concerned.

Yet again conflating Delta's overall performance with their performance in Seattle. We do not have the details of Delta's overall financial performance in Seattle. All we have is information that relative to Delta's other hubs, almost all of its domestic routes from SEA are underperformers (in the bottom 40%) - compared to other airlines, no hub performs as poorly domestically.

You can claim that is incomplete b/c it doesn't count international. Well given their middling traffic share and actual insider interviews like:

"A senior Delta Network Planning executive I interviewed estimated that only 2 of Delta's 12 new Asia routes from Seattle broke even on a variable cost basis. The rest lost money once incremental expenses like crew, fuel, and aircraft ownership were accounted for. The red ink was substantial, with some routes like Seattle-Manila posting losses of over $5 million annually according to internal Delta figures."

Combine that with similar reports for European routes, it's pretty obvious what is going on. Delta claimed Seattle would be their transpacific hub - today they fly to only Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai, 2 of which are slot-protected routes. Gone are Hong Kong, Osaka, and Beijing. Well it's obvious the strategy Delta claimed has been a failure so far.

Have at it - article with the quotes was posted in Nov. 2023 on Delta's network pre-COVID. Now if you want to say the author is fabricating his interviews and quotes I don't know what to say:

https://www.mightytravels.com/2023/11/grounded-why-deltas-seattle-hub-is-dragging-down-performance/#:~:text=Delta%20made%20Seattle%20a%20hub,region%20dominated%20by%20Alaska%20Airlines.

Also, no one is even talking about what you're saying - show me once where I even mention United or its TPAC profitability. No one has claimed Delta has "all these money losing hubs".

Delta has the most profitable hub in the US (ATL) supplemented by very profitable fortress hubs in Minneapolis, Detroit, and SLC. It is profitable (but to a lesser extent) at LAX and JFK/LGA with 1 very poor performing hub in SEA.

Only Delta employees themselves know the exact financials for SEA, but we have DOT data showing it is the worst performing major hub domestically. Internationally we have quotes and route evidence (3 of 6 Asian destinations are literally gone) it is a low performer, and the share data is what it is.

Forgoing profitability to gain market share is a common business strategy - this is what Delta tried to do to Alaska in Seattle when they hubbed it in 2013. They gained traction initially at a cost, but unfortunately they've struggled to gain share (they're lower today than in 2018) and the hub's performance has stayed stagnant as the lowest performing hub. Clearly it hasn't worked.

All the confirmation I need that you are arguing in bad faith. You claim: "The article is based off of 15 year data" - the article then proceeds to mention:

- Between 2009 and 2019, Delta increased its daily departures out of Sea-Tac by more than 150%. It grew from around 90 flights per day to over 230

- According to a Journal of Air Transport Management study, the top four airlines on the West Coast saw their average profits tumble from $4.60 per passenger in 2015 to just $0.60 in 2019. The hyper-competition led to irrationally low fares that could not sustainably cover costs.

- As a result, the airline faced serious operational problems at Sea-Tac throughout the 2010s. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Delta ranked worst among major U.S. airlines in on-time performance at Seattle from 2012 to 2019

- Domestically, Delta's Seattle routes faced stiff competition from Alaska Airlines as well as growing low-cost carriers like Southwest. Average one-way fares crashed by nearly 30% from 2015 to 2019 on key routes according to DOT data

When you claim "15-year old data" when the article repeatedly mentions the entire 2010's, Alaska's entry into OneWorld in 2021, and the Delta contract negotiation in 2020 you are either: 1) illiterate 2) lack reading comprehension 3) intentionally manipulating facts to suit your narrative 4) all of the above

The data provided is accurate until 2020 - while Delta's operations have improved since, as we know via Enilria's and other's posts and passenger traffic data, the status quo for Delta at Seattle has not changed domestically (or internationally given far lower volumes). You can claim whatever you want but your complete lack of any data or sources or anything indicates everything

I ultimately want Delta to succeed as well as all the other US carriers because competition is good for consumers. People in SEA/West Coast should want Delta and other carriers to thrive because it'll bring more traffic, routes, and lower fares.

My main concern is that Delta and other US carriers do a very poor job of adapting to their target demographics on these routes. At the end of the day, Asian populations prefer Asian carriers for one primary reason, the language barrier. Many travel with small kids, elderly parents, etc. Asian carriers have crews of native speakers for their markets, Delta and other US carriers rarely do.

That's why UA is smart to develop so much TPAC in Australia because English is their language. I've flown Delta's TPAC Asia routes, and even in D1 cabins, over half of the staff are English speaking. I generally notice that Delta's pax are not locals. People in Japan prefer JAL/ANA. People in Taiwan will prefer CI/BR and probably JX.