MEL-SYD is 5th busiest route

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I wonder if MEL-SYD would be coming in 4th place instead of 5th if the numbers were given by specific airport pairs instead of city pairs. Sao Paulo is served by 3 airports (VCP, GRU and CGH) and I don't think AVV traffic compares with CGH...
 
I know it can't make money, but I had a random thought about putting an A380 on MEL-SYD the other day. Probably when reading about the A380 being about helping slot constrained airports.
 
I know it can't make money, but I had a random thought about putting an A380 on MEL-SYD the other day. Probably when reading about the A380 being about helping slot constrained airports.

An hour loading 600 Y passengers for a 50 minute flight?

I guess they do run 747s as domestic flights in Japan.
 
I know it can't make money, but I had a random thought about putting an A380 on MEL-SYD the other day. Probably when reading about the A380 being about helping slot constrained airports.


I was lucky enough to fly on a QF A380 from SYD-MEL on a purely domestic run.

It may well have been the only domestic run like this to date. It was as a result of massive rainstorms a couple of years back which delayed the whole network by days, and QF had one A380 with a gap and so used it to take a batch of stranded passengers including me (I was meant to fly out at about 5PM the day prior).

It was pretty cool as I had not been on the QF A#80, and even though I was in economy I got chatting with a flight attendant on the plane and he gave me a private tour og the First and Business Class zones. J had pax in it, but F was empty.
 
I think QF did special runs to PER from SYD with 747s. Maybe for special event...not sure.
 
I think QF did special runs to PER from SYD with 747s. Maybe for special event...not sure.

Special runs? Wasn't it fairly common to have 747's do the transcon runs. It's coming up 6 years now the 743's were just finishing up doing those runs
 
QF used to run the majority of SYD-PER / MEL-PER vv flights with B743's 5 years ago. 2 years ago they pretty much had a daily SYD-PER vv B744 (I've used all these flights somewhat frequently, a little sad that it's now the domain of the A330's).

SYD-MEL is one of the busiest city parings (I'm pretty sure they look at cities rather than airports) in terms of flights. That might change now QF have decided to stop insisting on a minimum market share.
 
I'm sure the Japanese routes would decimate that list if they didn't have such an effective high speed rail system. Occupying a number of of those top spots despite this is a testament to how much their population moves around :|

A similar rail system along the east coat of Australia, will unfortunately probably not happen in our lifetime.
 
I'm sure the Japanese routes would decimate that list if they didn't have such an effective high speed rail system. Occupying a number of of those top spots despite this is a testament to how much their population moves around :|

Agreed. Also in what is a reverse of typical trends, they tend to run their largest aircraft on pure dom routes, eg taking a 747 on flights which might only last an hour or two was not uncommon until very recently.

A similar rail system along the east coat of Australia, will unfortunately probably not happen in our lifetime.

IMHO We have massive distances and are missing the population density to make such a system viable. Japan has a distance of 2,400km of high speed rail line with a population of 127 million. Australia would require around 1,800km of high speed rail line to service the golden triangle. That would mean it's useful for as a guess 14 million people (populations of MEL + CBR + SYD + BNE + regional cities and town along the way).

Ok so not every one of those 127 million people in Japan has completely easy access to the trains, but lets assume at least 50% (and this number is likely to be much much higher) of the country does, it means that for every km of track in Japan there is 26,400 people who has easy access. In Australia, that ratio goes to only 8000 people per KM. So it means that at best, we have only a third of the population to support such a system.

That is not to say that such a system wouldn't be really really cool, but just been really really cool does not equate a good financial investment. Before I am convinced that a high speed rail system would be viable, I would like to see someone point to a country of similar size and population density (I'm happy to limit it to the golden triangle) whom have managed to make such a system run both profitably and well, because every example I've been told so far has talked about joining two cities together over relatively small distances and each city has roughly the total population located inside it.
 
IMHO We have massive distances and are missing the population density to make such a system viable. Japan has a distance of 2,400km of high speed rail line with a population of 127 million. Australia would require around 1,800km of high speed rail line to service the golden triangle. That would mean it's useful for as a guess 14 million people (populations of MEL + CBR + SYD + BNE + regional cities and town along the way).

Ok so not every one of those 127 million people in Japan has completely easy access to the trains, but lets assume at least 50% (and this number is likely to be much much higher) of the country does, it means that for every km of track in Japan there is 26,400 people who has easy access. In Australia, that ratio goes to only 8000 people per KM. So it means that at best, we have only a third of the population to support such a system.

That is not to say that such a system wouldn't be really really cool, but just been really really cool does not equate a good financial investment. Before I am convinced that a high speed rail system would be viable, I would like to see someone point to a country of similar size and population density (I'm happy to limit it to the golden triangle) whom have managed to make such a system run both profitably and well, because every example I've been told so far has talked about joining two cities together over relatively small distances and each city has roughly the total population located inside it.

OK, I'll raise to the challenge, China according to this map File:China high-speed rail network.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is planning a high speed rail to Urumqyl, population 2.7M and a huge distance to anywhere, 3700 km to Beijing.
 
OK, I'll raise to the challenge, China according to this map File:China high-speed rail network.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is planning a high speed rail to Urumqyl, population 2.7M and a huge distance to anywhere, 3700 km to Beijing.

China has a much lower per capita income so trains are more attractive. Aus has long distances and high incomes, as in Europe. Trains work over relatively short distances, eg to 2 to 3 hours, ie London to Paris but struggle over longer routes. Syd to Cbr would work, Mel to Bris, or even Syd to Bris, probably not unfortunately.

Cheers
 
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OK, I'll raise to the challenge, China according to this map File:China high-speed rail network.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is planning a high speed rail to Urumqyl, population 2.7M and a huge distance to anywhere, 3700 km to Beijing.

What sort of expansions could happen beyond Urumqyl? and are there any major population centers along the way that could also take advantage of a line running through their backyard which then links up to the countries other high speed lines? Also not to put a too finer point on it, but I strongly suspect it is much much cheaper to build things in China than AU.


China has a much lower per capita income so trains are more attractive. Aus has long distances and high incomes, as in Europe. Trains work over relatively short distances, eg to 2 to 3 hours, ie London to Paris but struggle over longer routes. Syd to Cbr would work, Mel to Bris, or even Syd to Bris, probably not unfortunately.

Cheers

SYD - CBR vv is probably a line that would work. It's a relatively short length of line and whilst CBR doesn't have the largest of populations it does have a very affluent population, plus at 1 hour from CBD to CBD it would make it quicker than flying, make it cheap enough and it a potentially attractive option for commuters (from either cities) or even just for Canberrans to "drop into Sydney for dinner".
 
I think the interesting question is will VA ever contemplate adding a330's on the SYD-MEL run. Can't see any talk of this.
 
I think the interesting question is will VA ever contemplate adding a330's on the SYD-MEL run. Can't see any talk of this.

I highly doubt it A330's don't make good short haul flyers. Takes way to long to turn one around.
 
Did you miss this one about how one group reckons it can deliver a BNE-SYD-CBR-MEL VFT for $30 billion less than originally quoted. And they can have it completed by 2065!

High-speed rail: Australia could build network for $30*billion less, according to Beyond Zero Emissions | News.com.au

I did see that, I'm still very skeptical. Personally I'm of the belief that if it was a financially viable system, a company would have jumped into the market by now. (Yes I am aware the rumor of the Japanese company whom may be interested).
 
China also has much lower construction costs, and a governmental system that likes long-term nation building projects.

In Australia we just build white elephant railways (aka Adelaide-Darwin) but even that was only a $1bn
 
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