cowombat said:
My impression is that they only provide non-stop services to MEL and BNE if there is competitive pressure. They won't do so just because it would please the pax from these cities.
I have not seen much competitive pressure on QF to commence BNE-LAX daily non-stops.
cowombat said:
E.g. I live in MEL and fly frequently to the US. Go back to the early 90s - we had zero non-stops to LAX. Enter UA offering this service. Voila, QF responded within days. (and their 747-400s had been in service for some time, so there was no equipment performance issues constraining them to provide this service in preceeding years). The marketing bs from QF at the time of the service launch was disgusting... all about 'how wonderful the expanded service ex MEL on QF is...." Not a word to suggest they had been dragged kicking and screaming to the party. But the frequent travellers knew and QF might well remember that their best pax do know this sort of stuff.
There were some performance issues with the RR engines used by QF on their early 744 fleet. In fact, RR was paying QF a penalty for many years because the early engines did not meet the performance guarantees, which also meant LAX-MEL could not be operated without significant weight restrictions. UA's P&W engined 744's did not suffer the same problem and so they could actually operate that route with less limits.
In the late 1990's RR offered QF an engine upgrade to their older equipment which replaced the hot section with the newer Trent section. These upgraded engines are known as RB211-524G/HT. The original RB211-524G hot core has 18 fuel burners, while the Trent core on the G/HT variant has 24 fuel burners. This mod also gave the engines an additional 2000lb of thrust. This added performance and efficiencies meant QF could offer the LAX-MEL with less weight restrictions than previous.
The later delivered 744 aircraft for QF (from about VH-OJP onwards, but could have been later) had the Trent core installed from new, while the others in the fleet have had the modification added through the regular engine maintenance program.
Obviously the -ER model adds more performance improvements and means LAX-MEL can be operated most days with no restrictions.
So yes the introduction of non-stop LAX-MEL services by UA was a significant influence for QF, but without the engine improvement they would not have been able to compete economically with UA on that route anyway.
cowombat said:
So like a couple of posters have alluded, I think the answer is for the govt to allow more competitor airlines into Oz. The worst single decision this year was to disallow SQ to fly the Pacific. I'd love to see SQ permitted this from BNE, SYD and MEL - that would really force QF to pull up their sox!
Even though SQ would certainly add competition and force QF to make some changes, I don't see how SQ operating SYD-LAX will help force QF to add services to/from non-Sydney ports. And if SQ was to operate a new route such as CNS-LAX, I think QF would leave them to it as they can likely fill their aircraft with tourists but the yield would likely be a problem.
=cowombat said:
QF could also make some 'symbolic' recognition of MEL or BNE. Example, QF108 is JFK-LAX-SYD, with MEL and BNE pax changing a/c at LAX for their onward flights. Why not have QF108 JFK-LAX-MEL and get the SYD pax to change a/c? Now some will reply that this entails a higher % of pax and baggage to change a/c. But, getting JFK - MEL pax home is one of QFs worst performing services - they regularly miss the connection to QF94 (twice already this year for me
) If 108 goes to MEL, solves that problem, and there are more alternate flights to SYD that pax missing that connection can use.
Nothing to do with PAX transfers or baggage handling since all transit passengers still need to collect the bags at LAX anyway. I think it is more to do with the return flight (QF108) schedule reliability. There are two flights LAX-SYD each evening (QF108 and QF12), while only one non-stop each to MEL (QF94) and BNE (QF176). So in the regular even that QF108 is delayed into LAX from JFK, Qantas has more options for moving affected passengers between flights when they have the aircraft on the ground and ready to operate QF12, QF94 and QF176 covering the three Australian ports.
And of course it costs QF less in FF benefits if the majority of passengers heading Australia-New York use a single flight number. Connecting passengers (i.e. those from BNE and MEL) earn more SCs and FF points by changing flight number at LAX than do the SYD originating passengers that have a single through flight number. Fuel surcharges should be the same since QF does not charge a fuel surcharge for flight within or between USA and Canada.
I am not defending QF's Sydney-centric operations. They most certainly are Sydney-centric. But some of the arguments used above do not jell in my view. I live in Brisbane and generally only travel internationally these days, and except for trips to Asia via SIN I regularly end up connecting somewhere. But I generally try to use MEL for my connections to/from Europe. I have managed to avoid SYD on my last few trips.
