Recently, my neighbors visited Japan, and they flew through Shanghai…

The Chinese airlines are making a killing transporting people from Europe to Asia. Following Russian invasion of Ukraine, to punish Russia, America’s lackies decided to deny Russia their Boeings and Airbuses. As a response, Russia denied its airspace to airlines from unfriendly countries. This means that Chinese airlines now have a monopoly on flights between Europe and North Asia, and South Asia has traditionally been the domain of the Arabs, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In an interview on the Dutch television programme WNL Op Zondag, she [Marjan Rintel, the CEO of KLM] highlighted that, unlike European airlines for whom Russian airspace is closed due to the war on Ukraine, Chinese carriers can use Russian airspace when serving Europe, which saves them time, reduces fuel costs, and results in lower fares. “That sometimes saves you two to four hours. You see that reflected in the price, and of course, the costs are higher for us.”

***

Akin to rival Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) and its recent appeals to the EU, Rintel called on Brussels to address this disparity to level the playing field for European carriers. “Europe can at least see how we can prevent that unfair playing field by pricing it or looking at it differently.”

Source

I have written about Lufthansa’s woes on this blog here. So these airlines instead of demanding an easing of sanctions against Russia, which could open up flight corridors over that country, would rather like to make travel to Asia expensive for everyone. No doubt their demands were encouraged by tariffs on Chinese EVs. Not like the price of EVs isn’t already high for the consumer, and the latter does not see it as a worth while expense for EV’s that are generally shit cars. The Chinese offered a cheaper option, and had to be punished.

Deglobalization will ultimately hurt Joe Average, who is already suffering from inflation.