The irrelevance of Thailand

There was a fascinating comment made recently in an interview with the CEO of IAG, owner of British Airways, about stopovers between London and Sydney

There are so many mid-points now between Europe and Australia. You've got the choices of the traditional hubs like Singapore or Hong Kong. You've got the likes of Kuala Lumpur and now you've got the Middle East.

Bangkok anyone? Anyone?

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[MiniMee]

Bangkok anyone? Anyone?

Well, yes actually. Bangkok is a major hub for the Star Alliance network, so all the European member airlines including SAS, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Brussels, Turkish etc all route through BKK (and some route through SIN as well) on route to Australasia, as do Air New Zealand and of course Thai.

Whilst Malaysian is itself now part of the One World alliance none of its partners, including BA and Qantas, route through KUL.

BA dont fly to KL as a destination anymore (haven't for more than 10 years) So perhaps someone should tell Willie Walsh that.

Bangkok anyone? Anyone?

Well, yes actually. Bangkok is a major hub for the Star Alliance network, so all the European member airlines including SAS, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Brussels, Turkish etc all route through BKK (and some route through SIN as well) on route to Australasia, as do Air New Zealand and of course Thai.

Whilst Malaysian is itself now part of the One World alliance none of its partners, including BA and Qantas, route through KUL.

BA dont fly to KL as a destination anymore (haven't for more than 10 years) So perhaps someone should tell Willie Walsh that.

What an extraordinary piece of misinformation or perhaps, sheer dumb ignorance. The Star Alliance airlines mentioned all fly to Bangkok, at which point Thai Airways takes over and they all code share on a Thai aircraft to Australia. Air NZ does not fly any of its own aircraft to Bangkok, and their sole route to the UK - the point of Walsh's commentary - is via Los Angeles. Walsh's point was that for European airlines flying all the way to Australia, their options are Singapore, Hong Kong, perhaps KL and perhaps the Middle East. The only airline in MiniMee's list on which passengers can fly (with a change of aircraft) via Bangkok is Thai Airways.

[Smiles]

Kuala Lumpur (sp?) will undoubtedly be less popular for a year or so. CNN will see to that.

Come to think of it Air NZ may fly to the UK via Hong Kong as well - which merely underlines my point.

[fedssocr]

Well, that's the point of alliances, no? To link up schedules and fly code shares from hubs when there isn't enough traffic to justify flying your own a/c.

Makes sense for him to mention HKG which is a OneWorld hub given all of CX's flights in and out of there. If you are BA it would make sense to fly to HKG to link up with CX's schedule to Australia and elsewhere in Asia. And you can use CX's ground handling there as well.

SIN isn't much of a OW hub though as far as I know.

BKK is much more of a *A hub even though it gets traffic from lots of places.

The Middle Eastern airlines have been making a big play for connecting traffic. Since QR is a OneWorld member now it makes sense to route to DOH as well if you are in charge of a OW carrier in Europe.

[bruce_nyc]

Without even checking, I would have guested that Bangkok is a hub for no airline other than Thai Airways.