I read in the paper the other day that American Airlines is hoping to fly direct to China in the near future. Does anyone know how soon this might be? I don't know if they're talking months or years. Calling the airlines didn't help.

Thanks!!

AA is hoping to start flying ORD to Hong Kong and Shanghai starting summer, fall 2005. They're in the process of recalling 2400 pilots as well as some of the 5700 FAs that are on furlough.
AA is serious about the new routes. The preliminary talks with Chinese officials to get landings rights have been scheduled.
I really hope this happens!

That timing would be great for me! I'm planning a trip there Oct. '05. Right now, in order to fly on American and get my wonderful exit row seat, I have to go to Tokyo/Narita first, which I'd rather not do. Let's keep our fingers crossed!!

AA used to fly to HK for a short while. What happened?

I may be wrong, but I don't think AA ever flew that route. They use to fly to Australia and New Zealand, but traded those routes with PanAm in the mid 70's for Caribbean routes. As far as I know, Japan was and still is their only Asian destination.

I almost flew with AA HK - LA. They did fly that route for a short while.

AA newer flew to HKG. They've had a city ticket agent in Hong Kong for a long time, but their plane never went there. They never got the right for LAX-HKG, and didn't have the equipment to do it, until getting the 777 recently.

Delta did fly there for a very brief period, from Portland with MD-11. Pulled out pretty quickly.

AA were putting their flight number on the Cathay LAX-HK flight for awhile as a code share, a few years ago. All the flights were operated by Cathay.

AA still has 2 codeshares a day LAX-HKG, operated by CX.

AA codeshares with CX on 4 of CX's 5 US flight:

Two daily LAX
One daily SFO
One daily JFK (via YVR)

The only one not (yet) is the new HKG-JFK non-stop, CX830/831, starting June 27. It has not shown up on AA's timetable yet.

Plus a whole bunch of intra-Asia flights.