Summary
- Air Premia has joined Jin Air between Seoul and Dhaka, Bangladesh, each with a weekly flight.
- It’s Air Premia’s third route in Asia.
- The following recent service to start is Honolulu, taking off in December.
South Korea’s Air Premia has inaugurated a brand new scheduled charter service from Seoul to Dhaka. Announced in May, the primary plan was to launch in July, nevertheless it didn’t. As an alternative, the five-month result in October provided an awesome period of time, unlike the six weeks Air India has given to its recent Australia route. Air Premia, which describes itself as a hybrid carrier, only uses Boeing 787-9s and plans to have 15 by 2027.
Welcome, Dhaka!
Flightradar24 shows that the two,325-mile (3,742 km) airport pair launched on October twenty fourth. It’s served weekly and is scheduled as follows, with all times local:
- Seoul Incheon-Dhaka: YP5671, 17:30-20:40 (Tuesday)
- Dhaka-Seoul Incheon: YP5672, 23:40-08:10+1 (Tuesday)
Given 4 pilots in the next celebratory photo, perhaps they operate the return. Yes, it’s 15h 40m, along with pre-and-post-flight work, but this shouldn’t be not possible with that variety of pilots and two sectors. Perhaps the identical is true for cabin crew, especially if there have been more of them.
Photo: Air Premia
Air Premia doesn’t have the market to itself. It competes directly with fellow South Korean carrier Jin Air, which serves the airport pair on a charter basis. Launched in the course of the pandemic, it is usually weekly. While Flightradar and Cirium show that it nearly at all times uses the 189-seat 737-800, the 393-seat 777-200ER appears at times, most recently in August.
First used HL8516
The primary roundtrip was operated by HL8516, a 5.7-year-old 787-9. It’s the second oldest of Air Premia’s five aircraft, each with 309 seats in a two-class configuration. There are 56 premium economy seats (it says its 42″ pitch is the world’s biggest) and 253 in regular economy.
Photo: Air Premia
In accordance with ch-aviation, the aircraft was delivered to Norwegian Air UK in March 2018 as G-CKWA. Owned by Aergo Capital, it entered Air Premia’s fleet five years later in March 2023.
Why Dhaka?
Air Premia’s recent route to be driven by Bangladeshi employees in South Korea, the broader diaspora, and significant freight demand. In accordance with booking data, the Seoul-Dhaka point-to-point market had roughly 36,000 roundtrip passengers between January and August 2023. With passenger traffic up by about 7% versus the identical eight months in 2019, it’s an excellent foundation on which to construct.
Photo: Dongwon Search engine marketing | Shutterstock
Given Jin Air’s weekly service, the variety of indirect passengers (those that flew via a hub) was considerable, amongst Dhaka’s highest to any Asian city. It’s a really underserved marketplace for non-stop service, not that the brand new weekly flight will help much.
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Eight routes this winter
While subject to alter, its planned network (including scheduled charters) from Seoul Incheon is as follows. Honolulu is the subsequent to start. It is going to take off on December thirty first when it would be one among 4 carriers with non-stop service.
While broadly targeting different passengers, the budget carrier’s four-weekly operation might be against Korean Air (each day 747-8), Asiana (five weekly 777-200ER), and Hawaiian Airlines (each day A330-200).
- Bangkok: six weekly
- Los Angeles: six weekly
- Tokyo Narita: five to 6 weekly
- Newark: 4 weekly
- Honolulu: 4 weekly
- Frankfurt: 4 weekly
- Barcelona: twice-weekly
- Dhaka: weekly
Sources: Air Premia’s website, Cirium, Google Flights, Aeroroutes, ch-aviation, Flightradar24