The immediate effect of the A350 in 2018 was the launch of longer, ‘thinner’ routes to new destinations, predominantly in Europe. This was followed by the introduction of a Washington DC service and the announcement of the new Seattle service.

Senior Vice-President Americas Philippe Lacamp says: ‘What we’ve seen in Europe with the A350 being used in a long-thin approach will definitely work here, too.’

The A350 enables airlines to build the market for a route. If it works well, the frequency or number of flights can be increased, or the aircraft can be ‘upgauged’ to a larger aircraft like the 777 once the market is strong enough. Seattle’s four-times-weekly service has already been upgraded to a daily service, beginning in the summer.

Seattle is served by the smaller A350-900, while Washington DC is being served by the larger A350-1000. Jason Choi, Passenger Network Manager, says: ‘The -900 is a good fit for the West Coast but the increased range of the -1000 makes it ideal for new East Coast destinations.’

There is a something of a set formula for evaluating the potential of new routes. Lacamp says: ‘What we look for is a strong business market that has sufficient leisure appeal, some feed from the region and we generally require a fair chunk of VFR [visiting friends and relatives] traffic, too. You can play up and down these categories. If you look at Los Angeles, it’s big for business, leisure and VFR, and we have a lot of feed from our oneworld partner American Airlines. San Francisco is a big tech hub with Silicon Valley, and that’s a real driver for us, but we don’t have as much feed and it’s more of a standalone market.’