So, as of now, flights to/from South America to Asia are quite unreachable, even with the A359ULR.
I tried to put up a flight from my home base GIG to HND via LAX, but the second segment got me no pax at all.
Questions:
Air China currently operates, in real world, fifth freedom flights between Beijing and São Paulo via Madrid, being able to sell tickets on all segments. Could this be implemented sometime?
Even though, maybe, some destinations doesn´t have freedom enough to sell tickets between the stop point and the destination, we could be able to sell tickets to the destination intended, meaning that the higher ticket prices could, somehow, cover the costs of not selling the second or third leg of the flight, instead of only the first segment, as it is now. Is there any chance for this to happen?
Sadly, no, as any such trilateral agreements are usually negotiated on a case-by-case basis by the involved countries. There is no way for us to track all of them, so we rather keep it simple.
I am not 100% sure I understand what you mean, but I guess you’re trying to say that you’d like to sell only A-C but not A-B and B-C individually? If so, than that is something that would be supported in the future by fares and, depending on the structure of the network, some additional fare/routing rules.
There are many many fifth freedom routes, except to the USA due to the strict immigration regulations. I just mentioned one example, but I can say at least 5 carriers make flights from GRU-EZE coming in from a third country. Sadly, I understand that maybe the amount of work is too much.
Yes, exactly what I meant. Routes like DXB-BOG via MIA and the example I mentioned from Air China (PEK-GRU via MAD) are meant to reach from point A to C, currently not available due to operational restrictions, selling tickets that are more expensive and the fifth freedom just avoid the extra stop fuel costs, guaranteeing the aircraft stays full. Any chances we could see that? Selling tickets from point A-C, as if it was only a technical stop for refuel.
My understanding is that @NavaLines refers to the fact that you can’t sell only A-C, which means that some pax will book A-B only which in turn causes capacity on B-C to remain unused, which might not make any financial sense.
I can say, by my own experience, that it doesn’t work.
For instance, in Otto world, I set up a route ES8834/5 GIG-LAX-HND and back. I already had a flight GIG-LAX, ES8832/3. On the scheduling page, it would show that, from GIG, I had two flights to LAX, but none to HND, only if I changed the page to flights from LAX. The medium fare from GIG to LAX is somewhere around 640 A$. If the flight would go directly to HND, would be somewhere around 1100 A$. When I compared the flight economics details, both flights had exactly the same values for the leg GIG-LAX, and the flight LAX-HND would have no passengers at all and a little bit of cargo.
What I’m saying is, even if I couldn’t sell the tickets from LAX to HND due to lack of rights, I can’t sell tickets from GIG-HND as well and then it is only a burden to have the second leg since there were no pax from origin. If there was any way to sell from A-C and/or control how much of A-B and A-C we could sell then, maybe, economics of “via” flights could be reasonable and viable, like they are on the real world.
