>>1243123And speaking of 5th freedom tag-ons, why did U.S. legacy carriers end 5th freedom service across Asia? United (which picked up Pan Am's Pacific Network in 1985), Northwest and Delta offered to Narita, Itami, Nagoya-Chubu, Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Seoul-Gimpo, etc. Delta even had PDX-FUK service (using MD-11s) and Northwest flew DC-10s between Seattle and Bangkok. Now most of the 5th freedom service is gone, while SEA/PDX service to Asia has contracted dramatically. What happened?
I can think of some reasons for this, but I don't know which were the deciding factors.
-Boijinka plot
-1997 Asian financial crisis
-Post-9/11 clampdown in U.S. immigration/airport security
-Post 9/11 increase in oil prices combined with low yields in Asia = greater economic burden (I heard United's SFO-SEL-MNL flights were half-empty, partially due to non-revenue traffic heading to the Philippines)
-2008 global financial meltdown and subsquent merger of U.S. legacy carriers
-The modernization of archaic ETOPS rules in 1985 (after Engen replaced Lynn Helms as FAA administrator)
-Development of more efficient engines and the first widebody twinjets (767/777/A330 followed by 787/A350 later), which goes hand in hand with the previous point
On a completely different topic, was it due to ETOPS that international airlines ended stopovers in Kuwait, Bahrain, Karachi, Mumbai, etc.? I remember these stopovers in the 1990s.
