Quote:
Originally Posted by STrek777
I'm talking about the Beijing route. The USA and China negotiated very specific flight criteria. These awards were based on those negotiations. If US can't fly the route that doesn't just leave a China route open that leaves the 2009 Beijing route open.
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Incorrect. There is no "Beijing route". The route that is open can go to Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. They did negotiate very specific flight criteria, but that criteria was that the four 2009 route authorities could be awarded to any combination of flights to Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou.
For every award, the U.S. DOT selects a back-up carrier that will get the award , by default, if the primary carrier does not get it. This avoids the hassle of second selection process. In the case of the 2009 US Airways Philadelphia-Beijing award, it goes by default to United Airlines for Los Angeles-Shanghai, IIRC.
Back in 2005 when American was awarded Chicago-Shanghai, for example, Delta Airlines was awarded the back-up authority with their Atlanta-Beijing application, in which case if American was unable to start Chicago-Shanghai, rather than start a whole other round of applications, Delta would get Atlanta-Beijing by default.
US-China route authorities are divided into "Type 1", which can be used to Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, and "Type II", which can be used to a dozen smaller cities (and, not surprisingly, nobody has applied for yet).
The only time in which there has been a particular city award was for 2008, when they opened up seven frequencies that had to be used to Guangzhou, which went to United.