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Originally Posted by Austin1971
Eastbound is now covered thru London Heathrow with One World partners BA and AA. Eventually Westbound service to Seoul or Tokyo will happen with Star Alliance partners ANA or Asiana and UA, One World with JAL and AA or SkyTeam with KAL and Delta.
Rumors have been circulating at the port that UA may fill the Westbound route with a 787...Time will tell...
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I would love to see a westbound route out of Austin. However, I confident in believing that KAL will not fulfill this route. It will start its first routs out of IAH in May. And, it already has a route out of DFW.
Asiana is out (for the time being), as it does not operate the B787 (nor does it have any on order).
We can discount AA on doing anything! They would have done so long ago if they were interested. They would rather passengers transfer at DFW, LAX or ORD for the westbound route. This same hypothesis could be placed on UA (via different hubs). I have a hard time thinking UA would place a transpacific flight out of Austin rather than channel passengers through IAH, ORD, LAX or SFO.
JAL...maybe. I see ANA picking up the route before JAL would. However, JAL does not currently fly to any Texas city (neither does ANA). This is mainly due to the founding partners of OneWorld and Star Alliance having major hubs in Texas.
Delta...hummm. That's tough. Delta no longer has a hub in Texas. However, they are down the list on PAX at ABIA. I'm not sure Austin is a big enough market for them to place a transpacific flight out of AUS. Unless they plan on challenging AA (DFW) and UA (IAH) by making Austin a Delta/SkyTeam "hub." Yes, that's far fetched and very wishful thinking...but, maybe. They could be the catalyst for the development of the South Terminal.
ABIA could also court an airline to develop a round-the-world route through Austin. For example, Singapore Airlines flies out of IAH...not to Singapore (or even west). It flies non-stop to Moscow and continues on to Singapore from Moscow.
Having said that...and as an example: if the Austin route for BA is successful, they may consider flying the AUS-NRT route???
The arrival of BA to Austin is very exciting. It does open the door of possibilities to other transoceanic routes out of AUS. I'd love to see that happen...and the sooner the better.