Hong Kong Airlines announced plans to launch on March 8,
2012, a daily, nonstop, two-cabin, all-business class service between London
Gatwick and Hong Kong.
General manager for the United Kingdom Gerard Clarke
told BTN the carrier's Club Premier cabin with 34 lie-flat beds will be
comparable in price to the business-class products flown nonstop by other
airlines on the same route. Hong Kong Airlines also is offering a Club Classic
cabin, featuring 82 seats with a 51-inch seat pitch and a recline of 155
degrees. Clarke said Club Classic pricing "will appeal strongly to
passengers who would fly business class on an indirect route between London and
Hong Kong." The airline will operate service with Airbus A330-200
aircraft.
Hong Kong Airlines was established in 2006 and currently
flies to 24 Asian cities and Moscow with a more conventional two-class business
and economy product. Its network includes secondary and tertiary markets in
China, such as Chongqing, Changsha and Kunming. Clarke expects the London-Hong
Kong service to attract what he called the "top-end corporate
market," predominantly financial service firms, in Club Premier, and
leisure and small and medium enterprise passengers in Club Classic. "There
is increasing demand out of the U.K. SME market for travel into the regions of
China," said Clarke, who expects 15 percent to 20 percent of passengers to
connect to the airline's regional services.
All-premium scheduled air transportation has a checkered
history. Eos, Silverjet and Maxjet in the middle of the last decade each
launched premium-only transatlantic services, but all ceased operations between
late 2007 and May 2008. British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa, Swiss and Singapore
Airlines offer business class-only flights on select routes, such as the
latter's services from Singapore to Newark (the longest regular commercial
nonstop flight in the world) and Los Angeles. Only one scheduled long-haul
airline, OpenSkies, offers an exclusively business-class product, although it
is owned by BA and now operates on only one route, Paris-Newark, after ditching
Paris-Washington last month.
Clarke said Hong Kong Airlines will succeed where others
failed for several reasons, including the regional feeder network and its
ownership. "We are part of China's HNA Group," he said, "a
well-financed player across a number of sectors, including airports, hotels and
several other passenger and cargo airlines."