Qantas observations as a VA flyer

[medhead]

That's a false premise: people will get to their destination faster if the plane is able to board and take off faster.

If there is any false premise this is it. The plane is scheduled to depart and arrive at fixed time points. As mentioned, in SYD that arrival time is very fixed. On the rare occasions that I've checked in luggage to sydney I have had to wait upto 30 minutes before luggage has arrived on the carousel. That's first bag out, not my bag, so longer to wait for my luggage. I can be in the city in those 30 minutes.
Plus, of course, I travel with medical equipment and computer that can't be checked in. My clothes take up little space compared to those items. Meaning checking in my clothes isn't going to save much carry on space anyway. But I will then have to juggle 3 bags instead of 2.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

A real pet peeve of mine.

If people insist on HLO (and the horrible extra time this adds to boarding and the tantrums people throw when they can't store their bag und so weiter ) I wish they'd fly VA.

Could you imagine how much quicker boarding would be if people just checked their bags? And hopefully if people did this moreso, QF might have an incentive to fix 'priority' baggage.

It would be nice if this was the case - but it's really a symptom rather than a cause. Quick and efficient boarding can be done with good amounts of hand luggage. Hong Kong is an example. Even the USA is pretty well organised.

Airlines could start boarding 5 minutes earlier. Have bigger overhead bins. Have more staff to manage boarding. You don't necessarily need to penalise the passenger as a first instance.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

It would be nice if this was the case - but it's really a symptom rather than a cause. Quick and efficient boarding can be done with good amounts of hand luggage. Hong Kong is an example. Even the USA is pretty well organised.

Airlines could start boarding 5 minutes earlier. Have bigger overhead bins. Have more staff to manage boarding. You don't necessarily need to penalise the passenger as a first instance.

It's not unusual for US carriers to board even earlier than T-45. We flew UA GUM/NRT on a 772 which started boarding about T-55, an AA USA domestic flight at T-50 and an AS flight T-45.

The AS flight still departed late due no no room left for people's 'carry-on' so they had to bring their rollaboards to the aerobridge to be sent down the chute to go into the hold.

 

[Milefest]

Some interesting observations. I've been put in the opposite position where I mainly flew QF but had to change to VA.

Am I the only one struggling with this comment, I mean really isn't it about what time you arrive rather than what time you leave.

The only defence I can think of for OP is that there's less time waiting around at the gate to board? Although in my experience the occurance of departure delays for QF/VA are just as frequent as each other, I'm not sure what the data says though.