In trying to guess who will apply for what in 2010, I think we need to first consider whether the DOT is going to award only that year's frequencies in one of a succession of route cases (assuming no open skies) or combine the 2010 frequencies (21 weekly) with the 2011 frequencies (14 weekly) and maybe even the 2012 frequencies (another 14 weekly). I haven't a clue how the DOT will set up the route case(s) -- and I don't think the DOT does either at this point -- but we should realize that it's very unlikely that any carrier would receive more than seven frequencies if the 2010 award is considered in isolation. Thus, it's likely that each carrier would apply for only one route to operate a daily flight, which I think would be as follows:
AA: JFK-PVG
CO: IAH-PVG
DL: ATL-PEK
NW: DTW-PEK
UA: LAX-PVG
US: PHL-PVG
For some of the carriers (DL, NW and UA), it would amount to requesting again for 2010 what they didn't get in 2009. For CO, I believe that is the next China route on their list, it would open up another region of the country (Texas), and it would be a perfect route for the new 787s which should be in their fleet by then. For US, it's a chance to get lucky again. And for AA, I think it's a close call between JFK-PVG and LAX-PVG. But on balance, IMHO, JFK is the more important of the two airports for AA in terms of both the amount of long-haul international flights and destinations offered as well as the stiffer competitive and strategic challenge presented by DL (and CO at EWR) for dominance of international travel in New York. And regarding flight times, remember that the flights would go north from JFK, not west, keeping them well below the 16 hour maximum duty time limitation (and only 30-40 minutes more than ORD-PVG).
That said, and assuming that the applications are as stated above, I believe that the winners would be CO, UA and either AA or DL. First, the easy ones: (1) CO because it is the only application that would open up a new area of the country for nonstop China service (hey, it worked for DL/ATL this year with a much smaller local market); and (2) UA because the DOT will belatedly and probably grudgingly realize that nearly half of all U.S.-China traffic goes to or from the West Coast (LAX-PVG is the largest U.S.-China route by far without U.S. carrier nonstop service), which makes connections at hubs in the eastern half of the country fairly circuitous. And the losers are easy, too: (3) NW will again be told to stop catering to the Japan-China local market on its one-stop flights via NRT (as it was admonished in the previous China route case); and (4) US -- you're joking, right? As for AA vs. DL, I think it will come down to whether or not DL can show that it attracts significant domestic connections on its new ATL-PVG route because the local market is rather small and the DOT ignores international flow traffic over the hub in its decision-making. While I think DL will be successful on the ATL-PVG route, I suspect it will be due to large numbers of Latin American, Caribbean and perhaps even African connections, which will make it very difficult to show the DOT that the even smaller ATL-PEK route can succeed on local traffic and domestic connections alone. In that case, I think the award would go to AA for JFK-PVG due to the much, much larger local traffic base (even with MU already flying JFK-PVG and CO flying EWR-PVG) combined with some domestic connections to major markets like BOS, DCA, RDU and MIA. Of course, although less likely IMHO, both AA and DL could get the award if the DOT simply can't bring themselves to award UA a seventh daily flight to China and/or believes that no city west of Texas deserves more U.S. carrier nonstop service to China despite what the traffic figures say.
One last thing -- I think the idea of an eventual MIA-China nonstop service is a good one, and it could really threaten the viability of DL's service over ATL given the large amount of international connections available at MIA. But such service will need to wait for AA to finally make its long-anticipated 787 order and come to some sort of an agreement with its pilots regarding flights with more than 16 hours of duty time.
I'm sorry that this has rambled on a bit, but it's tough to give short answers to some of these issues. And that's without even trying to guess what might happen if frequencies from two or more years are at stake in a single route case. Of course, this is JMHO and it's worth every penny you paid for it! 😛
