Korean Air Enjoys Revenue, Traffic And Network Growth From Delta JV

Korean Air managing VP passenger network and sales Bo-Young Song discusses the outlook for 2019, the initial performance of its joint venture with Delta, the initial performance of its new Boston route, plans for further network expansion in 2H2019 and the airline’s fleet plan. Korean is targeting 7% passenger growth in 2019 and is relatively bullish despite higher fuel costs and a slowdown in South Korea’s local market due to revenue improvements generated from the JV with Delta and a newly implemented revenue management system. The JV with Delta began last year and has made possible the new Korean-operated Seoul-Boston route and the new Delta operated Seoul-Minneapolis route, both of which were launched in April and are performing well. The JV is also driving an increase in transit traffic beyond Seoul, prompting Korean to launch a new service to Clark in the Philippines and add capacity to existing Southeast Asian destinations. Korean is also expanding in China with new scheduled services to Hangzhou and Nanjing and in Europe with new charter services to Budapest and Oslo. Since this interview was filmed at the Korean Air-hosted IATA AGM in early June, Delta has acquired a 4.3% stake in Korean, further cementing their JV partnership, and Korean has announced an order for 30 additional 787s.