Which is the world’s busiest air route? An ide­al ques­tion on any TV quiz show. There’s a good chance that no con­tes­tant would know the an­swer or even come up with the cor­rect guess. That’s be­cause, in terms of pas­sen­ger traf­fic, the world’s most pop­u­lar route is ac­tu­al­ly a do­mes­tic route in South Ko­rea: from Gim­po, Seoul’s do­mes­tic air­port, to the pop­u­lar re­sort is­land of Cheju—about an hour’s flight from the cap­i­tal. Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from trav­el da­ta provider OAG, al­most 14 mil­lion pas­sen­gers make this short hop every year, about dou­ble as many who fly the most pop­u­lar do­mes­tic routes with­in Japan. Lo­cat­ed at the south­ern tip of the Ko­re­an Penin­su­la in East Asia, South Ko­rea is tiny com­pared to neigh­bor­ing Chi­na to the west and Japan to the east. Even though South Ko­rea is slight­ly small­er than Ice­land in size, it is home to some 51 mil­lion in­hab­i­tants.

Ac­cord­ing to an­a­lysts at the Cen­tre for Avi­a­tion (CA­PA), South Ko­rea has a thriv­ing do­mes­tic avi­a­tion mar­ket that served 65 mil­lion pas­sen­gers in 2017. This is large­ly at­trib­ut­able to the coun­try’s topog­ra­phy as the many moun­tains and stretch­es of wa­ter re­strict over­land trav­el, al­though there are com­pet­i­tive high-speed trains that run on trunk routes. As the coun­try’s flag car­ri­er and largest air­line, Ko­re­an Air has long dom­i­nat­ed the do­mes­tic mar­ket. But when the Kumho Asiana Group—a mul­ti-in­dus­try con­glom­er­ate typ­i­cal of Ko­rea—launched Asiana Air­lines in 1988, a sec­ond play­er ar­rived on the scene. The full-ser­vice air­line cur­rent­ly gen­er­ates rough­ly one-third of its busi­ness with­in its home coun­try where it serves ten des­ti­na­tions, but Asiana has al­so grown in­to a well-re­spect­ed, mid-size glob­al car­ri­er. It launched its first in­ter­na­tion­al ser­vices back in 1991, ini­tial­ly with­in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion and to Los An­ge­les. Short­ly af­ter, it added Vi­en­na and Brus­sels to its route map as its first Eu­ro­pean des­ti­na­tions.

With its fleet of 83 air­craft, Asiana is rel­a­tive­ly small com­pared to some oth­er East Asian car­ri­ers. Its ap­proach to growth is con­ser­v­a­tive, with a fo­cus on long-haul ser­vices. Asiana cur­rent­ly flies to 51 cities in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion, plus to six des­ti­na­tions in North Amer­i­ca and eight in Eu­rope. Air trans­port rat­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion Sky­trax award­ed the car­ri­er five stars—the high­est pos­si­ble rank­ing—for its out­stand­ing pas­sen­ger ser­vice. A mem­ber of Star Al­liance since 2003, Asiana of­fers a num­ber of pop­u­lar in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal routes via In­cheon as ap­peal­ing al­ter­na­tives for Eu­ro­peans who want to fly via Asiana’s world-class hub en route to Aus­tralia, for ex­am­ple, or for Amer­i­can pas­sen­gers who can reach 23 des­ti­na­tions in Chi­na with just one stopover. And for pas­sen­gers fly­ing in the oth­er di­rec­tion as well, of course.

Ac­cord­ing to CA­PA, the av­er­age length of an Asiana flight is three hours 20 min­utes, an in­di­ca­tion that the air­line’s main busi­ness comes from flights with­in cen­tral Asia. Seoul to Tokyo is by far Asiana’s busiest mar­ket and one that it ac­tu­al­ly serves on two to­tal­ly sep­a­rate routes, each with about the same num­ber of pas­sen­gers: One op­er­ates from Gim­po, Seoul’s do­mes­tic air­port, to Hane­da Air­port—which most­ly han­dles Tokyo’s do­mes­tic flights. The oth­er runs from In­cheon, South Ko­rea’s in­ter­na­tion­al hub, to Tokyo In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Nari­ta. These con­nec­tions rank fourth and fifth in Asiana’s in­ter­na­tion­al net­work, while routes from In­cheon to Shang­hai, to Kan­sai (in Japan) and to Los An­ge­les oc­cu­py the top three spots.

Flagship A380

In 2014, Asiana in­tro­duced the flag­ship Air­bus A380 to its fleet and now op­er­ates six of the 495-seat air­craft on routes to six in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions. It de­ploys its A380s on two dai­ly flights to Los An­ge­les as well as on ser­vices to Bangkok, Hong Kong, New York, Syd­ney and Frank­furt, the Star Al­liance hub. Asiana wel­comed its first A350-900 to the fleet in 2017. Now it op­er­ates six of the jets, with 15 more on or­der along with nine A350-1000 jets. De­liv­ery of these new wide­bod­ies, which is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by 2025, is set to mod­ern­ize the fleet, bring­ing down its av­er­age age of cur­rent­ly 11 years.

On re­gion­al routes, Asiana and its sub­sidiaries al­so op­er­ate 55 Air­bus A320 fam­i­ly jets pow­ered by V2500 en­gines. This is where MTU Main­te­nance Han­nover comes in, sup­port­ing Asiana’s V2500 fleet to en­sure smooth op­er­a­tions. In 2018, the part­ners signed a new con­tract cov­er­ing main­te­nance for 40 per­cent of the air­line’s V2500s and En­gine Trend Mon­i­tor­ing for Asiana’s whole V2500 in­ven­to­ry. “We signed our first main­te­nance con­tract with MTU back in 2011 for CF6 en­gines and we’ve been ex­treme­ly hap­py with their out­stand­ing ser­vice and ex­per­tise ever since,” says E-Bae Kim, Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Cor­po­rate Sup­port at Asiana. “In 2018, we em­barked on an­oth­er long-term jour­ney with MTU for our V2500 en­gines. Our A320 fam­i­ly air­craft form the back­bone of our re­gion­al busi­ness, so en­sur­ing their re­li­able op­er­a­tion is es­sen­tial to our suc­cess.”

Customer proximity is key

One im­por­tant ad­van­tage MTU of­fers in South Ko­rea is the pres­ence of a lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive. “We rec­og­nize that close cus­tomer prox­im­i­ty is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant here, which is why I moved out to Seoul in 2017,” says Wolf­gang Neu­mann, Di­rec­tor Sales, Far East Asia at MTU Main­te­nance. “This way, I have di­rect con­tact with Asiana and oth­er lo­cal cus­tomers on a dai­ly ba­sis. Be­fore, when I was fly­ing in from Ger­many for just a few days at a time, I al­ways had a fixed agen­da. Now I’m flex­i­ble and my cus­tomers can reach me at prac­ti­cal­ly any time—and that re­al­ly makes a dif­fer­ence.” This set­up al­so helps MTU get to grips with how a South Ko­re­an com­pa­ny ticks—some­thing that’s not al­ways easy for West­ern­ers. “My im­pres­sion from the time I’ve spent here in Seoul is that Asiana is quite a lean or­ga­ni­za­tion and some­what less hi­er­ar­chi­cal than its com­peti­tors,” says Neu­mann. And this prox­im­i­ty is some­thing the cus­tomer ap­pre­ci­ates too: “We know we can count on MTU to pro­vide the best lev­el of ser­vice for our com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions and that our suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship will con­tin­ue to grow,” says E-Bae Kim. “And I’m very proud to be part of it.”