‘Better food, better service’: China’s airlines fly past US rivals on Pacific routes

Chinese airlines are capitalizing on the wanderlust of China’s rising middle class by expanding their long-haul routes, and at a pace that is fast upending the hierarchy of global aviation. Since September, Chinese carriers have added seven direct flights to North America—including routes from second-tier cities less known abroad including Zhengzhou, Qingdao and Xiamen. By comparison, U.S. carriers launched just two China routes in all of 2016. Sichuan Airlines opened a new direct route between Los Angeles the northern Chinese city of Jinan on Tuesday. It is the third nonstop US flight the airline has started operating since October. Hainan Airlines, China’s biggest privately owned carrier, by itself launched 13 new long-range routes this year, including a new Beijing-Las Vegas flight initiated last week. The result is that trans-Pacific travel, where American carriers were once the most conspicuous, is becoming an increasingly Chinese affair. “Chinese airlines are going to be as dominant, if not more dominant, than the big three US carriers within the next decade,” said John Grant, a UK-based aviation industry consultant. Grant characterised the situation as a “land grab,” with China’s airlines scrambling to secure new routes—even commercially shaky ones—in the hope they will become viable in the future. Last year, for the first time, Chinese airlines overtook their American counterparts in the number of scheduled US-China flights. Now the gap is widening: Chinese airlines are scheduled to operate 781 China-US flights this month, compared with 596 by US carriers, according to aviation data firm OAG. Several factors are driving the trend, starting with the growing Chinese appetite for travel. Last year 120m Chinese tourists journeyed abroad, four times the number that ventured overseas a decade earlier, according to Chinese government figures. Over the same period Chinese visitors to the US grew 10-fold to 2.6m.<br/>