But what were the loads out of PER when the final SIN flights got dumped. I'd doubt the average loads for QF were 25% (I do believe this information was publicly available).
Even if they where making a profit out of PER, that doesn't mean that they should maintain a route. Let's say they assign a plane to do PER-SIN and they get $10,000 average profit per flight for doing that flight, what if they where to move that plane to a SYD-HNL and where able to get $11,000, would it make sense keeping it on the PER route which ultimately earned them less just to keep PER happy.
What if they have looked at their sums and realised that despite the fact that moving the flight away from PER it would mean that they would lose PER customers, they more than made up for it by flying SIN-BNE. Loads on a single flight tells you nothing, even loads across a single route tells you nothing, to determine the best placement for the equipment they need to look at a whole fleet and route structure across hundreds of variables, including
- Expected utilisation of the route (aka how many bums in seats can the airline get on the route)
- Expected pax flow on advantages
- Expected pax feeder advantages
- Cost of Fuel at Airport (not all airports sell fuel at the same price)
- Landing / Take off Fees
- Airport Infrastructure costs (eg the cost of utilizing checkin desks / gates / lounges at the chosen airport)
- Ground Staff costs (eg the cost of having ground staff at a location / outsourcing costs to a 3rd party contractor)
- Risks such as weather
- Fleet utilization (aka what routes will keep the fleet in the air for the most hours per day, this is also determining appropriate aircraft choices for the selected routes, and what routes the plane can do afterwards)
- Maintenance positioning and schedule
- Competition from other airlines and what advantages they may have over yourself.
I stopped at 11, but I could easily keep going...
