Lufthansa's Frankfurt-Beijing also skips. European airlines fleeing China: what's underneath
There are seven European airlines that have cut (or are about to cut) flights to the [...]
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They are Seven European airlines cut (or about to cut) flights to China during 2024. The latest is Lufthansa, which as of tomorrow, October 27, will no longer operate any connections between its Frankfurt hub and the Chinese capital Beijing.
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The news is sensational because, In years past, the Frankfurt-Beijing route had been for the German carrier an authentic 'trunk route', a key route in its network, for a time even served with the Airbus A380. Instead, in recent times it has been a more modest A340-300 connecting the two cities on a daily basis.
Initially, LH had announced that it would drop from 7 to 5 weekly frequencies on the route, but assigned it to a more capacious A340-600. Instead, it then decided to cancel the flight altogether, leaving Munich-Beijing (operated with an Airbus A350-900 five times a week) as its only link between Germany and the Chinese capital.
Before her, Virgin Atlantic had announced the stop of the London (LHR)-Shanghai (his only Chinese destination), which went off yesterday, Oct. 25.
British Airways followed suit, canceling the London-Beijing, which had been operating continuously (pandemic aside) since 1980 for at least all of Winter 2024-2025 and all of Summer 2025, as well as Reduce its daily flights to Hong Kong from two to one and entrusting the 'survivor' to a Boeing 787-9 on the route where, pre-pandemic, none other than one of its A380s flew.
And what about Finnair? Once considered a 'must' for those planning to fly between Europe and China to the point of operating 44 weekly connections between its Helsinki hub and the dragon country, last August had reduced those connections to one daily service to Hong Kong and three weekly frequencies to Shanghai (although he announced a few days ago that he plans to increase these to four starting in Summer 2025).
'Neighbor' SAS will disappear from China starting Nov. 8, when it will operate its last route between Copenhagen and Shanghai.
Finally (but more 'cancellations' are to be expected if the war between Russia and Ukraine does not end), Lot Polish Airlines from today, October 26, will cancel all connections between its Warsaw hub and Beijing, a city on which, in pre-war times served both airports, the 'historic' Capital and the brand new Daixing.
Underlying this Deluge of 'cancellations' there is war between Russia and Ukraine and the resulting closure of Russian airspace to Moscow's 'enemy' countries.
Measure that resulted in a Lengthening flight times between Europe and China ranging from two to three hours, depending on whether the flight is outbound (to China) or return (from China) with the resulting in a boom in fuel expenses and a much higher utilization of aircraft and flight and cabin crews than was previously the case. Which further spiked the costs of those routes and also affected the companies' schedules, perhaps to the detriment of other more 'profitable' routes.
But costs skyrocketed are only part of the story. The other is the boom in routes operated by Chinese airlines to European cities, both in terms of operators and in terms of destinations and frequencies.
Chinese companies Are free to fly over Russian airspace and this turns into a form of 'unfair competition' against European 'competitors'. If we add to this the fact that Chinese carriers have definitely lower base-costs (operational and personnel), here come up Economy round-trip fares at 4-500 euros, which would be difficult for European carriers to cope with even if there were no obstacle-Russia.
And, again, Business rates (always round-trip) under 2 thousand euros (and sometimes under 1,500 euros).
In short, Increased costs of flights to Asia are only one side of the coin. Otherwise, one would not understand how and why, in the run-up to Summer 2025, the same Finnair that has reduced its connections to China to a drop in the ocean, has instead announced a sharp increase in flights to Japan, with increased weekly frequencies to Osaka (from five weekly to daily), Nagoya (from two to four), and Tokyo, where both Narita and Haneda airports will receive daily flights from Helsinki.
