Re: Awesomer? News
[armchair airline exec]
Assuming you mean SYD-SFO, that is a long time on the ground. If it left a few hours earlier, the return could be timed to arrive before the SYD curfew.
[/armchair airline exec]
I did indeed mean SFO, well spotted.
What are you basing that guess on?
The old times were
SYD-SFO 1255-0900
SFO-SYD 2310-0540+2
Do we even know if the new SFO flights will have the same numbers as before?
I 'll try to explain how I reached that conclusion... Basically, it comes down to the QF 747 schedules in and out of SYD.
QF's current 747 routes are BNE-LAX-JFK, SYD-LAX (becoming 3x weekly), MEL-LAX (3x weekly - becoming 2x weekly), SYD-HKG, SYD-NRT (will be SYD-HND in December), SYD-JNB and SYD-SCL (4x weekly). There's also SYD-YVR but I'm going to ignore that for the moment because it is only operating for a couple of months per year and, at least over summer, it just so happens to coincide with the period that SYD-HKG flights are getting an A380, so I'm going to assume that the aircraft for YVR is coming from there.
Now, BNE-LAX-JFK requires 2 aircraft. SYD-HKG requires 1 aircraft.
This is where it gets interesting. Assuming that QF wants to maximise aircraft utilisation (which they'll have to), they'll presumably want to minimise the time aircraft spend on the ground. For this reason I'm going to hazard a guess that SYD-HND will be retimed so that one flight is during the day, and the route only requires 1 aircraft. (It may not - but see my explanation at the end.)
Now, QF has 2 other flights that leave SYD in the morning - QF63 daily and QF27 4x weekly. Both these aircraft arrive back into SYD the following afternoon. Out of the SYD flights, only QF17 and QF73 (I'm guessing this will be the designator for SFO - it may not be) are now unaccounted for. If QF were to maximise fleet utilisation, they would surely send these two flights over the Pacific in the evening (a la the current QF17 schedule), straight after the aircraft arrive from JNB and SCL respectively. The flights would then be back in SYD in 2 mornings' time to head back to JNB or SCL (or elsewhere). That way, JNB and SFO only need 3 aircraft between them and SCL/LAX only need 2 between them (given the frequencies).
The only 747 flight that's not accounted for now is MEL-LAX twice a week. Presumably this would be worked into the SYD-LAX rotation in some way.
If QF don't retime SYD-HND, they could send an aircraft to SFO in the morning after the HND arrival and send the JNB arrival to HND in the evening, but that will require one more frame due to the combined day of extra time an aircraft would sit on the ground in both HND and SFO.
Other possibilities include having the 747 LAX-SYD or LAX-MEL as daytime flights with an immediate evening turnaround back to LAX, or even having SYD-SFO as a mid-morning departure with early morning arrival and SFO-SYD as a day flight with evening arrival into SYD. But I would say my initial suggestion would be more likely.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but this all seems logical to me. Oh, and I'm sorry if I lost anyone with that explanation...
. The only reason you can see at SYD is because they are across the apron from each other. At BNE they are in a line and probably the same distance apart.
