Korean Air & Asiana Merger Finalized, Shaking Up Aviation in Asia

I see alot of people comparing South Korea to Taiwan. Korean Air has 137 passenger fleet Asiana have 70 China Airlines with 65 Eva Air with 75 Starlux with 24 Taiwan might have more FSC but they are small and more comparable in size to Asiana than Korean. That's about 249.7k people per plane for South Korea. And 142.7k per plane for Taiwan. Know that South Korea has a higher number of low cost carriers with bigger fleet sizes than Taiwan's low cost carriers, that balances out.

Meanwhile Taiwan has 3 airlines

Are these the 40 seat D1 configurations?

As usual, there is more interest in the incessant DL vs UA comparisons that anything else on OMAAT. As for the discussions about ITA joining Star w/ LH’s acquisition, the appropriate comparison is with SK being partially acquired by AF/KL. CPH is simply a far better location as a secondary JV hub than Italy ever could be. Further, UA, like DL, is larger than ITA in Italy during the summer at least so there is much less incentive to share that revenue while the opposite dynamic is true with SK which needs to have a year round US partner which DL has been to AZ. And given that carriers on the Iberian peninsula remain in flux, AF/KL/DL/VS could end up with an even larger portion of European aviation if the Air Europa acquisition moves forward by AF/KL. The AF/DL/KL/VS JV is the largest TATL JV and that will likely be maintained regardless of what the other two JVs do. As for the Pacific, Ben is absolutely right that the KE/OZ merger is a gamechanger that will shake up Asian aviation. As for the whole discussion about DL vs UA 1. There are far too many people that assume that DL is content to remain at its current size which has been about half the size of UA. DL was the largest carrier across the Pacific, a region which has been very difficult for US carriers for years, at the time of the NW merger. Shortly after DL acquired NW’s heavily Tokyo based Asian network, DL quickly started to try to turn the inconsistently profitable operation around. DL was thrown a curve ball w/ Japan’s decision to re-open HND to longhaul international flights again, a result of the inability to fully grow NRT because of the decision of a single farmer not to sell his property which was right where NRT needed to put another runway. 2. DL refocused HND on the local Tokyo market and shifted its connecting focus to ICN w/ KE which is a founding member of SkyTeam w/ DL. 3. OZ was not strong going into covid and with many things, covid doomed OZ. KE was essentially asked to take over OZ by the Korean development board and waited for years for the whole approval process, all of which required DL to move very slowly in regrowing the Pacific by adding very little to ICN that could disrupt the approval process as well as any markets that can be a part of the DL-KE JV; just as with the AA/JL and UA/NH JVs, there are some markets outside of the home countries that are part of the JVs. 4. Whether DL grows becomes larger than UA is not the point – and I’m not sure anyone has stated that will happen with certainty. DL/KE does have enormous growth potential at ICN but also in other markets along the Pacific Rim, as well as in a lot of cities that will best work w/ connections, including S. Asia which can’t be served nonstop from the west coast as long as Russian airspace restrictions remain in place. Removing all of the duplicate KE/OZ flights will allow aircraft to be deployed for new banks of flights as well as new flights on existing banks. 5. Continually touting the size of UA’s SFO hub doesn’t prove one thing about the growth rate of DL or UA’s network. The simple fact is that UA’s Pacific network is far more heavily centered in one state – and one city – than DL’s is over the Pacific and either DL or UA is across the Atlantic. UA doesn’t concentrate so much of its TATL network in one city as much as it does over the Pacific and the reason is clearly Russian airspace restrictions and the 787’s capabilities. UA had a far more geographically disbursed network pre-covid than it does now. DL has 4 gateways that have access to two or more cities in E. Asia out of 6 total hubs and that will grow to 5 as soon as LAX gets a DL operated ICN flight while SLC and JFK will make DL’s 7th and 8th and those two cities will come as gateways to Asia. UA has TWO gateways with two or more destinations in E. Asia. And before someone jumps in and tries to include S. Asia and the Middle East, DL will return to both of those regions and likely with more gateways than UA or any other US carrier. 6. Fleet is a big part of the reason why DL’s GROWTH RATE over the Pacific will be higher than UA’s. UA still flies 777-200ERs and -300ERs while nearly DL’s entire TPAC network is operated on new generation aircraft. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that DL has a profit advantage given that it uses a much higher percentage of new generation aircraft on flights where the different in engine technology amounts to a $15,000 to $30,000 difference in costs. And the A350 in either version is longer range with the -1000 promising to do flights which no other US carrier can do. The larger size and efficiency of the A350 will simply provide greater profitability; UA knows full well that it cannot. add capacity which isn’t profitable and that is very much tied to costs. 7. DL/KE’s growth RATE will simply be higher than UA’s and the depth of DL’s JV network will be more extensive than UA/NH’s. People love to argue about JVs when it works in their favor but the KE JV IS what will make the difference in DL’s size across the Pacific.

Two thoughts: (1) Now the Delta-KAL JV dominates travel between the US and ROK. Our primary hope to keep fares low appears to be ROK, whose government blocked the planned devaluation of its frequent flyer program. The US was last to approve, dithered only to not ask for anything? (2) Korean aviation industry has deep ties to Boeing and now Airbus; they ate their dog food even when it made fleets complex.