The Port of Portland held a boarding meeting on December 11, 2024 and during that meeting they discussed the lack of transpacific flights. They went through some slides on the rebound of Asia travel and how it is still below 2019 levels, but, they also mentioned that some of the board was headed to Atlanta next week to have discussions with SkyTeam and Korean Air Lines. The discussion goes on to highlight how good the connections are out of Seoul-Incheon Airport to the rest of Asia.
Delta used to fly Portland to Tokyo-Narita but in the latter half of 2023 they ended that route. Since then, there have not been any non-stop passenger flights to Asia from Portland. Korean Air Lines is a Delta partner and is a member of the SkyTeam alliance. Having flights going through Seoul makes a ton of sense to connect passengers to the rest of the continent would be huge. Even if Korean only ran these flights 3-4x/week I believe there is enough traffic (based on the slide shared at the board meeting) to make it profitable. I’ve posted the full video below, starting when the discussion about Asia begins. They discuss their meeting Korean around 39:12.
There is also mention of discussions with JAL (Japan Airlines) in Tokyo sometime soon though no details were shared. There was also a very short bit about pursuing summer seasonal service to Dublin, Paris, and Munich. Of those, Paris seems the most likely because of Air France’s ties to Delta and existing service to Amsterdam on KLM.
In any case, a super interesting developments for Portland and PDX, hopefully we see more flights and service around the world!