Originally Posted by The Situation
Intuitively, that is right. The goal of SEA is to 1) feed international flights, especially TPAC flight and 2) stick it to AS for rebuffing their takeover attempt (although this goal is probably not as high on the priority list as it used to be given personnel changes over time).
Well, there are only two TPACs flown by DL, ICN and HND, so I doubt they would build a hub for that. If the plan was to add a lot more Pacific flights that plan has been discarded along the way. DL actually has more flights to Europe from SEA than across the Pacific. I was thinking about DL's partners, they also are not strong in SEA and mostly fly to the same destinations as DL. The only additional service to a destination not served by DL that I can think of is AM to MEX.
Originally Posted by SuperEWR
I'd argue SEA's geographic positioning is pretty strong, Air Canada has used Vancouver's geographic positioning as a TPAC hub and has arguably nearly as strong an Asia presence as UA out of SFO. AC has the benefit of owning the Canada market vs Delta competing for SEA, but offset by fewer US flights for connections. Both are affluent metros with large Asian populations, but SEA has more corporate customers (not much of a benefit right now). SEA has a larger population and higher GDP per capita than Vancouver. A fair number of puts and takes, but I'm not sure why SEA grow significantly for DL, even if it doesn't quite become the TPAC megahub that is UA's SFO
AC has done a nice job building up YVR's TPAC service. But I can't see how it is "arguably nearly as strong" as UA in SFO. Nonetheless kudos to AC for what they have achieved in YVR.
It is great to see everyone's thoughts on what DL is doing in SEA. Unlike AA or UA DL is not giving much explanation on their network strategy during their recent earnings calls so maybe they don't have one they are confident sharing. To DL's credit they chiseled their way into the NYC market and made it work. Perhaps the SEA strategy of dumping AS and switching to competitor from partner was nothing more than that. Equal parts determination and hubris. Zero parts conventionial strategy.
UA did something pretty remarkable in SFO. Back in the late 90s they said they wanted to add non-stop TPAC flights to their network and not have all flights connect in NRT. Most of this was incremental, ICN and TPE had both NRT connections as well as non-stop from SFO. 10 years later they publicly said that the NRT connecting model using UA metal was destined to end as all destinations got non-stop service. Amazingly they did this, and they did it well. They invested in the right planes, pushed A and B to come up with a solution that would work economically for them to fly to SIN non-stop. Apart from whatever is going on in China UA only dropped SGN and BKK while adding a ton more service.
Somewhere around 10-12 years I was speaking with someone at UA and they said that the vision had been 85% of their passengers across the Pacific should be able to make the entire trip with one connection. Primarily connecting in SFO, but also LAX, ORD and EWR. Giving credit where credit is due, they did it. SFO has tremendous domestic connections and with 85% of their Pacific ticket destinations covered in their own network they achieved this.
I don't know what DL is doing with SEA and TPACs. They have a far higher number of passengers double connecting from points across the US: domestic to DL international gateway, DL or partner flight to partner hub, and then connection on partner. With DL only flying to ICN and HND from SEA and HND having very little partner connections, DL or DL's partners would have to increase flying from SEA. But if we layer on top of this no significant WB aircraft orders for growth at the moment so I do not see how they can grow at SEA without diverting resources from other hubs.
I think DL is in a pickle in SEA. The purchase of NW gave DL a larger business in the Pacific than even UA. And look at the situation today. For the health of the market we need AA or DL to do better across the Pacific.
