Flights between the U.S. and China have been severely limited since the start of the pandemic. Even as China re-opened, they’ve limited flights by U.S. airlines, and the U.S. government has limited flights here by Chinese airlines. Neither side’s decisions are supported by the bilateral agreement between the U.S. and China.

With limits on flying between the two countries slowly being lifted, United has filed to operate more flights. One of those is San Francisco to Chengdu. They’ve filed to fly to an airport there that no longer accepts international flights.

• Prior to the pandemic, international flights operated to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU).

• All international flights have moved to Chengdu Tianfu International Airport (TFU).

• But United filed to fly to CTU, and they’ve loaded these flights into their schedule – though they aren’t yet selling flights on the route (availability is zeroed).

As first noticed by Enilria, effective March 31, 2024, when United has their San Francisco flight filed, it’s the only international flight published in and out of Chengdu CTU airport – a flight that Chengdu is not allowed to accept.

It’s likely that United realizes this.

1. They haven’t flown the route since prior to the pandemic, due to Chinese restrictions. They’ve asked to keep the route suspended through March, and this request will likely be extended. Since the route authority was granted subject to United using it they’re asking DOT for a waiver.

2. With flights still limited between the two countries, and restrictions overflying Russia making the route impractical, operating the route doesn’t make sense. But they don’t want their authority for it to go dormant.

3. They certainly won’t fly to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU) when service does resume in the future. As Enilria points out,

   United can’t reallocate the frequencies to another airport without filing in the DOT docket and they don’t see a need to do that until the bilateral further liberalizes and/or the Russian airspace reopens, so they continue to publish ghost flights to an airport that is closed (to international flights).

U.S. airlines don’t want limits on Chinese airline flying lifted without imposing restrictions on their use of Russian airspace, limits that U.S. airlines face. That’s certainly not supported by the bilateral agreement between the U.S. and China.

Before the pandemic U.S. airlines had been heavily committed to China, but they were mostly squatting routes (Chinese airlines were doing the same). They don’t necessarily want to fly all of the routes they were allowed, since there were more flights than demand and fares were low. American learned its lesson when it lost “tens of millions if not hundreds of millions” of dollars flying there (narrator: it was hundreds of millions).

Since there’s no Open Skies treaty between the U.S. and China the Department of Transportation handed out allowable frequencies. U.S. carriers tried to grab those, even when they didn’t have great flying opportunities, in case they were useful in the future and to block competitors.

Delta had purchased a stake in China Eastern and made real progress aligning with them. Naturally, then, American Airlines followed Delta and bought a stake in China Southern. But American never flew to China Southern’s home in Guangzhou, and in 2019 wrote down the value of its investment by a quarter.