Zhengzhou—capital of central China’s Henan Province—is to have direct air service to Luxembourg on China Eastern by late 2018, as local media report
郑州—卢森堡客运航线 年内将开通Zhengzhou-Luxembourg will open before year-end

Moreover, reporters learnt from airport officials that intercontinental links to Madrid, Los Angeles, London are in the pipeline too

It’s worth mentioning CGO has been running an incredibly booming cargo business in recent years, esp with Cargolux Group which maintains a strong presence there

So, it looks like Zhengzhou is doubling efforts to play catch-up with neighboring capital cities Xi’an and Wuhan in opening long-haul intercontinental routes

The report also says Henan Province approached several well known airlines to open CGO-LUX before reaching agreement with MU

Wondering why MU got chosen, instead of, say HU or GS

Serious question, why?

Very limited connection opportunities at CGO. I would love to know what the PDEW looks like for this route. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Luxembourg is a beautiful country, but it’s very small, and with CDG and BRU about 3 hours away by train, and AMS/FRA each less than 5 hours...yes, why? At least it’s got a central location to a lot of places? Maybe they have an agreement with a tour operator in Luxembourg for Chinese tourists?

Definitely a headscratcher for a passenger route. Unless the belly can carry that much stuff, the whole route makes absolutely no sense.

It's one thing to operate the cargo route as Cargolux does right now (CGO along with WUH are as good as MEM and SDF being cargo hubs with its central geographical location), it's another to think anybody would fly to LUX of all places, at least anybody that is willing to spend money.

2 PDEW? 5% load factor?

may be operated by 747F with pax services

Presumably it'll primarily be for charter passengers, who'll use LUX as a pretty central location to visit places in Europe by coach.

chrisp390 wrote:

2 PDEW? 5% load factor?

In an article about SE launching a one weekly CDG-TNA flight, they mentioned Paris being the top european destination out of Jinan with 4 076 O&D traffic in 2017, which equals to 6 PDEW.
So you do the math

Thibault973 you need to read around the China political issues rather than common sense western capitalism ,
These second and third tier routes are about projection of power and influence more rather than profit , however it’s almost certain the cabin will be filled with middle class Chinese tourists whilst the hold be full of cargo .
The tab will be being picked up by the Henan Province Communist Party for sure

BTW it’s actually a rather busy airport served by just about every Chinese regional brand , will be the second long haul route after Vancouver .

Zhengzhou is a major logistics hub. It is at the crossroads of a dozen of main rail lines, national highways, and it has extensive infrastructure: huge working areas full of warehouses, cranes, packaging plants etc running around the clock (you can see hundreds of people working there at 3am on a Sunday morning).

Luxemburg is one of Europe's main logistics hubs. I am not surprised.

This has Chinese tour group + stuff as much cargo as you can written all over it. 1x weekly?

rutankrd wrote:

Thibault973 you need to read around the China political issues rather than common sense western capitalism ,
These second and third tier routes are about projection of power and influence more rather than profit , however it’s almost certain the cabin will be filled with middle class Chinese tourists whilst the hold be full of cargo .
The tab will be being picked up by the Henan Province Communist Party for sure

BTW it’s actually a rather busy airport served by just about every Chinese regional brand , will be the second long haul route after Vancouver .

If it is political they would launch it from PEK or second beijing airport

C933103

The regional parties and governments are tasked with this projection as part of their economic development by the Central Government and as actively directed by Xi Jinping himself.

There are however a few conflicts as well especially at Beijing and Shanghai.

With the exception of secondary routes - HNA territory and Amsterdam an historical anomaly- ALL along haul haul routes from Beijing are pure Air China routes whilst down at Shanghai the local government are actively trying to protect China Eastern by blocking Air China slot requests for several routes they have route authority for !

The Chinese aviation market is not all it seems and it’s certainly not your typical western free market , there are far greater “ political” games at play.

c933103 wrote:

rutankrd wrote:

Thibault973 you need to read around the China political issues rather than common sense western capitalism ,
These second and third tier routes are about projection of power and influence more rather than profit , however it’s almost certain the cabin will be filled with middle class Chinese tourists whilst the hold be full of cargo .
The tab will be being picked up by the Henan Province Communist Party for sure

BTW it’s actually a rather busy airport served by just about every Chinese regional brand , will be the second long haul route after Vancouver .

If it is political they would launch it from PEK or second beijing airport

At the moment, it is "one route, one Chinese airline". So on long-haul routes they don't overlap. This might be beginning to change: https://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com ... one-china/

Why would anyone fly Luxembourg to Zengzhou with pax? Surely an all-cargo service would be better. Luxembourg is nice, but it's too small to warrant flying intercontinental for 10+ hours just to see Luxembourg on its own.You'd be visiting neighbouring countries anyway so why not just fly to France or Germany? There'll probably be as much cargo as possible wedged in the bottom of the plane, a few businesspeople and officials and the occasional chinese tour group onboard, as well as a few confused young backpackers from Luxembourg. 90 percent chance of failure here.

China banks are setting up Luxembourg offices one after other so there is a business link that could eventually justify a flight but Zhengzhou ???

As far as I know it's going to be a cargo flight. Cargolux has HCNA as shareholder and will setup a new subsidiary in China. It was to be called Cargolux China but will eventually be called Henan Cargo Airlines

Some journalist may have mixed something.

[email protected] wrote:

c933103 wrote:

rutankrd wrote:

Thibault973 you need to read around the China political issues rather than common sense western capitalism ,
These second and third tier routes are about projection of power and influence more rather than profit , however it’s almost certain the cabin will be filled with middle class Chinese tourists whilst the hold be full of cargo .
The tab will be being picked up by the Henan Province Communist Party for sure

BTW it’s actually a rather busy airport served by just about every Chinese regional brand , will be the second long haul route after Vancouver .

If it is political they would launch it from PEK or second beijing airport

At the moment, it is "one route, one Chinese airline". So on long-haul routes they don't overlap. This might be beginning to change: https://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com ... one-china/

No one fly PEK-LUX now

A cargo flight I can see. This seems really out there.

They better be doing this in a Twin Otter if they hope to have any kind of load factor

It will be either for Chinese tour groups (who are shuttled around by ground transport, so it doesn't really matter where they fly into/out of so long as it's central enough) or cargo or both.

[email protected] wrote:

Presumably it'll primarily be for charter passengers, who'll use LUX as a pretty central location to visit places in Europe by coach.

It will be either for Chinese tour groups (who are shuttled around by ground transport, so it doesn't really matter where they fly into/out of so long as it's central enough) or cargo or both.

Totally true

That's the prevailing norm of how Chinese group tours to Europe (or for that matter, to many other regions) are operated and organized, involving the essential use of coaches and buses that would shuttle hordes of Chinese tourists around not just one country, but several countries packaged by travel agencies as a whole travel product

Single-country tour in continental Europe would hold far less appeal to Chinese tourists as opposed to multiple-country travel, as most of them would like to make the most out of a Schengen visa opportunity that is not so easy to secure as they desire, given the constant headache of the visa issue facing the majority Chinese

So there's nothing surprising at all when you find them descending upon FCO or PRG, but departing from CDG or BRU

rutankrd wrote:

These second and third tier routes are about projection of power and influence more rather than profit , however it’s almost certain the cabin will be filled with middle class Chinese tourists whilst the hold be full of cargo .
The tab will be being picked up by the Henan Province Communist Party for sure

The regional parties and governments are tasked with this projection as part of their economic development by the Central Government and as actively directed by Xi Jinping himself.

One must concur with your reasoning there, considering the Chinese lexicon of "One Belt One Road" keeps popping out from Chinese airlines, airports and governments whenever a new intercontinental/international route opens

BTW, the bill is eventually footed by the money of Chinese taxpayers, who've simply been denied oversight of their governments' budget

workhorse wrote:

Zhengzhou is a major logistics hub. It is at the crossroads of a dozen of main rail lines, national highways, and it has extensive infrastructure: huge working areas full of warehouses, cranes, packaging plants etc running around the clock (you can see hundreds of people working there at 3am on a Sunday morning).

Luxemburg is one of Europe's main logistics hubs. I am not surprised.

That's an insight
Plus Henan is a densely populated province with a population of 100 million ppl, yet to have a passenger service to any European destination at all

If this is a cargo flight, it will be massively successful. CGO is now one of China top cargo airport thanks to the likes of Foxconn. I hope it is a misunderstanding that this is going to be a passenger flight as LUX will have virtually no demand from Henan. Something like LHR, CDG, FCO or MOW is probably more logical from Henan to Europe.

Zoedyn wrote:

[...]So there's nothing surprising at all when you find them descending upon FCO or PRG, but departing from CDG or BRU[...]

Exactly. And as far as LUX/Luxembourg is concerned, one should not forget that the airport also serves the nearby West German town of Trier. It already sees 1,000 Chinese tourists per week because it is the birthplace of Karl Marx.

Recently the city of Trier has been awarded with a present from the Chinese government: a 5.5 m (18 ft) high Karl Marx monument.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201805/0 ... 1be2a.html

Zoedyn wrote:

Totally true

That's the prevailing norm of how Chinese group tours to Europe (or for that matter, to many other regions) are operated and organized, involving the essential use of coaches and buses that would shuttle hordes of Chinese tourists around not just one country, but several countries packaged by travel agencies as a whole travel product

Single-country tour in continental Europe would hold far less appeal to Chinese tourists as opposed to multiple-country travel, as most of them would like to make the most out of a Schengen visa opportunity that is not so easy to secure as they desire, given the constant headache of the visa issue facing the majority Chinese

So there's nothing surprising at all when you find them descending upon FCO or PRG, but departing from CDG or BRU

Just found another article about the air link (Off People's Daily...so it has to be accurate)
http://ha.people.com.cn/n2/2018/0615/c3 ... 09283.html

It mentioned that the flight is likely to start off as charter in September, and eventually moving to scheduled flight. Not surprisingly, tons of talks to travel agencies for tour packages as part of the preparation for the new flight.

Also, as part of the whole Europe push, Luxembourg had opened up "Luxembourg Tourism Visa Delivery Agency (Zhengzhou)" in Zhengzhou, means that locals in Zhengzhou can now do all the paperwork to applied for a Schengen Visa in Zhengzhou instead of having to go all the way to Beijing.

mdavies06 wrote:

If this is a cargo flight, it will be massively successful. CGO is now one of China top cargo airport thanks to the likes of Foxconn. I hope it is a misunderstanding that this is going to be a passenger flight as LUX will have virtually no demand from Henan. Something like LHR, CDG, FCO or MOW is probably more logical from Henan to Europe.

To start, there are already cargo flights between CGO and LUX. CGO is Cargolux's "China hub".

And it is not just Foxconn - CGO (along with WUH) are centrally located and are both very good logistic hubs. It's no different than Cargo megahubs at SDF or MEM.

zakuivcustom wrote:

[ Also, as part of the whole Europe push, Luxembourg had opened up "Luxembourg Tourism Visa Delivery Agency (Zhengzhou)" in Zhengzhou, means that locals in Zhengzhou can now do all the paperwork to applied for a Schengen Visa in Zhengzhou instead of having to go all the way to Beijing.

If this is the case, clearly this passenger flight is going to happen.

AFAIK foreigners who need a Schengen visa need to apply on the first country they visit. Why would Luxembourg open a visa office in Zhengzhou of all places? Only if a flight to LUX was to be scheduled.

rutankrd wrote:

C933103

The regional parties and governments are tasked with this projection as part of their economic development by the Central Government and as actively directed by Xi Jinping himself.

There are however a few conflicts as well especially at Beijing and Shanghai.

With the exception of secondary routes - HNA territory and Amsterdam an historical anomaly- ALL along haul haul routes from Beijing are pure Air China routes whilst down at Shanghai the local government are actively trying to protect China Eastern by blocking Air China slot requests for several routes they have route authority for !

The Chinese aviation market is not all it seems and it’s certainly not your typical western free market , there are far greater “ political” games at play.

CGO is neither Beijing nor Shanghai and why would Chinese central government instruct such route to be flown from CGO instead of other cities that both have more transfer connection and passenger demand.
Regional governments are tasked to build up economy but you can be sure the national government would not instruct the regional government to do things like this that compete against national main hub

SCQ83 wrote:

zakuivcustom wrote:

[ Also, as part of the whole Europe push, Luxembourg had opened up "Luxembourg Tourism Visa Delivery Agency (Zhengzhou)" in Zhengzhou, means that locals in Zhengzhou can now do all the paperwork to applied for a Schengen Visa in Zhengzhou instead of having to go all the way to Beijing.

If this is the case, clearly this passenger flight is going to happen.

AFAIK foreigners who need a Schengen visa need to apply on the first country they visit. Why would Luxembourg open a visa office in Zhengzhou of all places? Only if a flight to LUX was to be scheduled.

But the thing is Zhengzhou is actually the Third city in China with this kind of facility. How about the other two?

c933103 wrote:

But the thing is Zhengzhou is actually the Third city in China with this kind of facility. How about the other two?

The other two are probably Beijing and Shanghai, where Luxembourg has diplomatic representation.

http://shanghai.mae.lu/en/Visa-immigration

c933103 wrote:

But the thing is Zhengzhou is actually the Third city in China with this kind of facility. How about the other two?

The other two are Beijing (The main embassy) and Shanghai (Which takes care of visa for people living in Shanghai city along with Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces).

c933103 wrote:

CGO is neither Beijing nor Shanghai and why would Chinese central government instruct such route to be flown from CGO instead of other cities that both have more transfer connection and passenger demand.
Regional governments are tasked to build up economy but you can be sure the national government would not instruct the regional government to do things like this that compete against national main hub

If you read this article:
http://www.hnhtyxgs.com/htxx/_A__3175.htm

You can see the Henan gov't is trying hard to "fulfill the words of Xi Jinping" by "successfully integrated Henan into the greater (national) plan of 'One Belt One Road'".

Yes, CAAA would not "tell" Henan gov't to open a route to LUX, but rather, the instruction is "fulfill 'OBOR'", and by opening CGO-LUX, the Henan gov't can now "show" that it's doing something. In another word, yes, this has "Mianzi Projects" all over it.

zakuivcustom wrote:

Just found another article about the air link (Off People's Daily...so it has to be accurate)
http://ha.people.com.cn/n2/2018/0615/c3 ... 09283.html

It mentioned that the flight is likely to start off as charter in September, and eventually moving to scheduled flight. Not surprisingly, tons of talks to travel agencies for tour packages as part of the preparation for the new flight.

Also, as part of the whole Europe push, Luxembourg had opened up "Luxembourg Tourism Visa Delivery Agency (Zhengzhou)" in Zhengzhou, means that locals in Zhengzhou can now do all the paperwork to applied for a Schengen Visa in Zhengzhou instead of having to go all the way to Beijing.

I got a chuckle when I got to the quote 'accurate'. Yes agree People's Daily are good for factual news like this, but we all know how useful this newspaper is outside of the reporting of non-political news. Having said that thanks for the link though.

zakuivcustom wrote:

c933103 wrote:

CGO is neither Beijing nor Shanghai and why would Chinese central government instruct such route to be flown from CGO instead of other cities that both have more transfer connection and passenger demand.
Regional governments are tasked to build up economy but you can be sure the national government would not instruct the regional government to do things like this that compete against national main hub

If you read this article:
http://www.hnhtyxgs.com/htxx/_A__3175.htm

You can see the Henan gov't is trying hard to "fulfill the words of Xi Jinping" by "successfully integrated Henan into the greater (national) plan of 'One Belt One Road'".

Yes, CAAA would not "tell" Henan gov't to open a route to LUX, but rather, the instruction is "fulfill 'OBOR'", and by opening CGO-LUX, the Henan gov't can now "show" that it's doing something. In another word, yes, this has "Mianzi Projects" all over it.

True, but there are so many ways to fit into belt and road initiative than sponsoring obscure routes. Well maybe Luxembourg would have a better chance to success than those Eastern European and Central Asian market

mdavies06 wrote:

zakuivcustom wrote:

Just found another article about the air link (Off People's Daily...so it has to be accurate)
http://ha.people.com.cn/n2/2018/0615/c3 ... 09283.html

It mentioned that the flight is likely to start off as charter in September, and eventually moving to scheduled flight. Not surprisingly, tons of talks to travel agencies for tour packages as part of the preparation for the new flight.

Also, as part of the whole Europe push, Luxembourg had opened up "Luxembourg Tourism Visa Delivery Agency (Zhengzhou)" in Zhengzhou, means that locals in Zhengzhou can now do all the paperwork to applied for a Schengen Visa in Zhengzhou instead of having to go all the way to Beijing.

I got a chuckle when I got to the quote 'accurate'. Yes agree People's Daily are good for factual news like this, but we all know how useful this newspaper is outside of the reporting of non-political news. Having said that thanks for the link though.

But yes, by "accurate" I mean it's factually correct as there's no propaganda involved.

c933103 wrote:

True, but there are so many ways to fit into belt and road initiative than sponsoring obscure routes. Well maybe Luxembourg would have a better chance to success than those Eastern European and Central Asian market

True, but it almost seems like the whole "Henan Civil Aviation Development & Investment Co." is 100% focused on having a link to LUX for unknown reason. Every single news pieces is about the "Zheng(zhou)Lu(xembourg) Air Link"

Look for some heavy infrastructure investment around LUX by Chinese companies, as in making the LUX area another Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone (aka aerotropolis). IMO, Luxembourg is first EU move in an "Africa play" by China.

Easy to see CGO as the third hub for CV (Cargolux) after LUX and OVB (Novosibirsk Tolmachevo). Novosibirsk's population is about 1.5 million, but it's a CV hub. Assuming this is the tip of the iceberg in a larger plan (thus "Africa play"), CV is going to greatly benefit (and could even resume pax charters). This is a very savvy move for CV vs. 5X at SZX and FX at PVG.

WPvsMW wrote:

Look for some heavy infrastructure investment around LUX by Chinese companies, as in making the LUX area another Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone (aka aerotropolis). IMO, Luxembourg is first EU move in an "Africa play" by China.

Let's hope then that Luxembourg won't get screwed over by Chinese companies like what happened in Poland when the Chinese were supposed to build highways in time for Euro 2012.

In fairness, I see this a little more than a "face" route for the Henan government. Rich, important, well developed cities have direct flights to Europe, so if Zhengzhou has a direct flight to Europe then it must mean that Zhengzhou is rich, important, and well developed.

Maybe a bit off topic here but then maybe not that much.

Is there a possibility to convert a pax 744 into a variant where you have cargo on the main deck and pax (I mean regular paying pax) on the upper deck in the long "hump" and then market it as both a cargo and a pax flight? Pax would go through the regular airport facilities (check-in counters, security, immigration) and then be be bussed to the cargo area where they would use stairs to board. Has anyone tried that? You can get up to 60 people on the upper deck of a 744 (and even more on a 748)...

Tailwinds13 wrote:

Serious question, why?

Cash traffic.

B747-Combi ??? No problem... but it's pax foward and cargo aft.
https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/KLM/K ... ombi_B.php

New combis are not allowed. The existing ones can continue to fly but new ones cannot be built and conversions from full pax/full cargo cannot be made, afaiu.

Hence the question about the freighter with seats on the upper deck only. It is also a question about the logistics and the legalities of this: can a cargo airline (or a cargo subsidiary) take paying pax? Is it possible to make pax go through the regular terminal and then take them to the cargo area to board a cargo flight (and do the opposite on arrival)?

There has been for a long time Bank of China in Luxembourg.

EightyFour wrote:

In fairness, I see this a little more than a "face" route for the Henan government. Rich, important, well developed cities have direct flights to Europe, so if Zhengzhou has a direct flight to Europe then it must mean that Zhengzhou is rich, important, and well developed.

Very well said. At least they've improved by a lot when it came to international flights, though. Back when I went to Zhengzhou around 2011 (As part of a tour around Central Plains...so went to XIY and back), their only "international" flight was a few weekly A320 to HKG on CZ (CZ doesn't even fly that route anymore).

They also have EK service (although through YIN), which is something that not many Chinese cities can say (Other than that EK only fly to the "Big 3" aka PEK/PVG/CAN along with HKG).

Otherwise, we'll see what MU come up with. Maybe it'll be those few off charter like that MU flight to PIT?

flyfresno wrote:

Luxembourg is a beautiful country, but it’s very small, and with CDG and BRU about 3 hours away by train, and AMS/FRA each less than 5 hours...yes, why? At least it’s got a central location to a lot of places? Maybe they have an agreement with a tour operator in Luxembourg for Chinese tourists?

If I could speculate on your thought, I might think that the rationale might fall on the unprecedented growth of wealth that from the Chinese East coast is now spreading inland and the demand for tax-sheltering countries. Still, I agree with you, this is kind of unusual.