Ask the pilot

Why do two U.S. airlines fly to Uruguay, but none to Poland? And what does Iceland have that New Zealand doesn't? Inside the mysteries of who flies where.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

July 7, 2006 | What do the following nations have in common? Czech Republic, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Malaysia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Uzbekistan, Pakistan. That was the riddle posed here last Friday, and solved, I'm proud to report, in short order by several readers. First to figure it out, scoring an autographed copy of the world's most invisible book, was Mike Vanne, of Boston (since he's local, and to save on postage, I made Vanne come to the house and pick up his prize). The two-part answer goes like this:

1. Each of the listed nations is home to an airline that provides regular scheduled service to the United States (mostly to New York-Kennedy). Left to right, that'd be CSA, Royal Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Royal Air Maroc, Emirates, EgyptAir, Malaysia Airlines, Austrian, LOT, Finnair, Uzbekistan Airways and PIA.

2. No U.S. airlines operate to any of these countries. Take the Czech Republic. The Czech national airline, CSA, has flown between Prague and New York for several years. Yet none of our own airlines -- neither United nor Delta nor American nor anybody else -- returns the favor.

And the list is by no means complete. You can add New Zealand, for one, ever since United pulled out of Auckland. Ethiopia is another. Ethiopian Airlines, one of Africa's oldest and most reliable carriers, serves Washington-Dulles, providing the only direct link (it's a one-stop) between North America and East Africa. Bangladesh too. Biman Bangladesh Airlines has flown to JFK for many years.

I don't bring this up as a criticism, necessarily. Notwithstanding my prior lamentations on the lack of a global presence among America's airlines, I think the situation is interesting more than anything else. That a given route makes sense from a foreign carrier's standpoint does not mean that it makes sense from ours. As I touched on last week, the criteria of route planning are highly complex, taking in any or all of the following: market demographics, scheduling issues, overflight charges and airport handling fees, local staff wages, fuel costs, security issues. Not to mention that some routes are tightly regulated. The chief reason we've seen a recent explosion of routes between the United States and India is an "open skies" agreement signed by the two nations in 2004.

Moreover, certain markets simply won't support multi-carrier competition, especially when a state-controlled airline is involved. Does Uzbekistan Airways make a legitimate profit flying twice a week between Tashkent and New York? Who knows, but I highly doubt that a reciprocal service would be viable. New Zealand, meanwhile, is a destination beloved of many Americans, but it's a very small country (population 4 million) and it's extremely far away. (Los Angeles to Auckland clocks in at 5,652 nautical miles, or nearly twice the mileage from New York to London.) Does a market this limited and logistically challenging justify a daily 747 going head-to-head with Air New Zealand? Apparently not. Iceland presents a similar example. Icelandair flies to several U.S. destinations. Relatively few Americans travel to Iceland, and the same holds for Icelanders (there are fewer than 300,000 of them) coming here, but the airline has cultivated a successful flow-through market at Reykjavik, where passengers connect to and from cities in Western Europe. (Icelandair carries about 1.7 million people annually. That's six times the population of its home country!)

Furthermore, we're under no obligation to operate in a given country just because we can or because we need to make some vague patriotic statement. In the heyday of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot's far-flung network, the most expansive on earth, was a political organ as much as anything, with empty Tupolevs and Illyushins shuttling to places like Nicaragua and Burundi (discounting what nefarious hardware may have lurked in the cargo holds).

That being said, a few examples are head-scratchers. One that jumps out is Poland. You mean to tell me that Uruguay, 10 hours away, with a population of under 4 million, is able to support two U.S. airlines -- American and United -- but that Poland, despite being closer and far more populous, and despite there being 10 million Americans of Polish descent, is served by none? True story, though it depends on your definition of "serve." Enter the magic of code-share arrangements. Service by proxy, our airlines seem to think, is often the best option. Dial up United Airlines or tap into its Web site, and it will be happy to sell you a ticket from New York or Chicago to Warsaw. Or to New Zealand, for that matter. Only in the fine print do you discover you'll actually be riding aboard Star Alliance partners LOT and Air New Zealand. (For Americans fed up with crappy service aboard our largest carriers, that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

Next page: How does politics influence the routes game?