The US and Chinese governments came to an agreement back in 2004 allowing a gradual increase in air service over a six year period. Next year, there will be one additional service allowed from an airline that already flies to China. Of course, all four carriers that already fly there have submitted their bids.

China is obviously a lucrative market for US airlines. It’s heavily restricted so there isn’t as much capacity as the market could bear, and China is growing like crazy. So, you would of course expect that the airlines would salivate at additional opportunites to fly there. Let’s look at the current situation.

As you can see, there are four airlines currently flying to China from the US. Let’s look at them individually along with the websites they’ve set up to lobby for the new service.

Northwest
In the past, Northwest has been happy building up its China service through its Tokyo/Narita hub, but that is starting to change. They have been flying to China for a long time, so naturally they’re going to compete for more service. This time, they’re trying for Detroit – Shanghai nonstop.

The arguments on their China website are that Detroit is the “premier international connecting airport in the United States” and that overall travel time to many of these connecting cities will be shorter than on anyone else.

American
American is a newcomer to China service, but of course, they want more. Currently only serving Shanghai from Chicago, American is proposing to now serve Beijing from Dallas/Ft Worth.

They’ve sent up an extensive website with many different arguments. The main one is that it’s the only service to China from the southern US so they could gather traffic from many points and give them one stop access to China for the first time. Strange to see on their map they include places like Phoenix and Boston, which clearly are better served from other places. Most of the cities that would gain their first one stop flights are in Texas and the Gulf Coast.

United
United is also a veteran in the China market. After years of running flights through the Tokyo/Narita hub, United has taken a more direct strategy making all flights run nonstop to the US now. Originally, United was expected to apply for San Francisco – Guangzhou flights (as they had previously), but they surprised everyone with an application for Washington/Dulles – Beijing instead.

Their website is actually a thinly-veiled third party website for the Capital-to-Capital Coalition supporting service between the two cities. They argue that DC is the largest metro area without service to China, has the largest Chinese population without nonstop China service, and should be connected to Beijing due to political ties.

Continental
These guys are another newcomer to the China market with only the Newark – Beijing route operating now. They have applied for Newark – Shanghai flights.

I can’t find a website for them, but I do have a press release detailing their arguments. They say that Shanghai has no nonstop service to the northeast US from a US carrier, the new service would connect the two financial capitals, and there is a huge Chinese population in New York.

The Verdict
What we have here is the people touting connecting opportunities (American, Northwest) vs. those extolling the benefits in the local market (United, Continental). In my opinion, the local markets should and do have a stronger argument.

There are very few cities that can’t reach China with one stop service these days. It’s true that American and Northwest can open up some cities, but these aren’t large places. The real benefit is in directly linking two cities to help encourage passenger and cargo traffic between the two.

That leaves us with United and Continental. In the end, while connecting Newark and Shanghai would be beneficial, I think United’s application will win out. There is already nonstop service between New York/JFK and Shanghai up to four days a week on China Eastern, but nobody flies between DC and China. Connecting the political capitals is smart when it’s the politicians who make the decisions, and I think United realized that. The fact that this decision would also be supported by a large Chinese community in DC as well as fantastic trade opportunities makes this even more compelling.

Now, where they’ll find an extra airplane to fly the route is an entirely different story.

Back at the end of August, the District Court judge reviewing Northwest flight attendants’ right to strike put the decision on hold until he could gather more info.

Today, he finally issued a ruling saying that the flight attendants will not be allowed to strike at this time and the matter has to go back to the bankruptcy court for further proceedings. I’m not sure exactly what that means yet.

This all goes back to the interpretation of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) which binds airline employees as well as those that ride the rails. Now a little history.

Airlines and its employee unions/workgroups/etc come to agreement on a working contract. These contracts are for a set period of time, but they never expire. When the time period is up, they become amendable. If negotiations fail and mediation (National Mediation Board) is unsuccessful, both side enter a 30 day cooling off period. After that, they are entitled to self-help, which can include strikes.

This is fairly straightforward, but it entered a gray area when Northwest voided the flight attendants’ contract. See, the airline was given permission by the bankruptcy court to impose a contract that would dramatically reduce pay. As soon as they did that, the flight attendants argued that since they never agreed to this contract, the RLA didn’t apply. So they wanted to strike without going through all the hoops required in the RLA.

I’m not a legal scholar by any means, but I side with the flight attendants here. They are working under a contract that they never agreed to work under, and they should be permitted to seek self-help. Of course, my opinion sadly holds no legal value, so we’ll just have to see where this one goes. Appeals are flying as we speak.

Ok, maybe in this case, the correct term is “overweight,” but either way you look at it, you’ll have to leave those heavy bags at home from now on if you fly Continental.

Recently, most US airlines standardized their baggage rules to allow bags up to 50 lbs for free, bags 51 to 70 lbs for a fee, and bags 70 to 100 lbs for a bigger fee. Now, Continental has stopped allowing any bags over 70 lbs.

Really, if you can’t fit everything you need in a couple of 70 pound bags, there’s something wrong. Continental’s website does note, however, that you still check electric wheelchairs and other assistive devices free of charge.

Here are the weight restrictions for a few select airlines on domestic routes:

American – up to 50 lbs free, $25 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs, $50 per bag from 71 to 100 lbs
Continental – up to 50 lbs free, $25 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs
JetBlue – up to 50 lbs free, $20 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs, $50 per bag from 71 to 100 lbs
Northwest – up to 50 lbs free, $25 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs, $50 per bag from 71 to 100 lbs
Southwest – up to 50 lbs free, $25 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs, $50 per bag from 71 to 100 lbs
United – up to 50 lbs free, $50 per bag from 51 to 100 lbs
US Airways – up to 50 lbs free, $50 per bag from 51 to 70 lbs, $80 per bag from 71 to 100 lbs

Labor Day weekend must have shaken the cobwebs out of the schedule planning groups, because we continue to see a whole slew of new routes coming out.

• First up is Northwest’s new service between Grand Rapids (Michigan) and New York/LaGuardia airport. That’ll be one lonely daily flight each way on a 50 seat CRJ starting Nov 1.
• Northwest also announced a big bump in flights from Indianapolis. There will now be a fourth daily flight to New York/LaGuardia, a second daily flight to Ft Lauderdale, and a second daily flight to Tampa starting Nov 1. On Oct 1, Orlando gets a second daily flight. And for the winter season (Jan 3 to Apr 30), Ft Myers will get a second daily flight.
• Allegiant continues its string of random cities that sound like they should be somewhere with new three times weekly flights between Orlando/Sanford and Fayettville (North Carolina) starting Nov 7. Yeah, that’s North Carolina, not Arkansas.

This afternoon a judge ruled that, well, he’s not ready to rule yet.

So he told the Northwest flight attendants they won’t be able to strike tonight at 10p Eastern as they originally planned. I haven’t seen a new date when a ruling is to be expected but it could be coming anyday I suppose.

You won’t hear much from me again until Monday. My girlfriend and I headed out today to visit her parents, but sadly our bag full of toiletries didn’t make it with us. Stay tuned for the rest of the story next week along with a full trip report.