My mistake - I read the references to DNATA in above posts and cough/u/me'd they are the baggage AND ground handlers. Sloppy!
If you can provide a link that proves a B787 turnaround time is the same as that for a B737 - I am happy to be proven wrong. I have not found any.
Turnaround times for B737 are much shorter than for B787s with a B787 described as taking between 90 to 120 minutes. A 737 can be from around 28 minutes (in the US).
The introduction of 35-minute turns would “drive further operational and schedule efficiencies”, lower cost per available seat kilometre and increase the return on invested capital, Qantas Domestic chief executive Andrew David told the financial community during Tuesday’s presentation.
Also, these initiatives would result in an $80 million benefit by the end of 2015/16.
“In effect, what we are implementing are low-cost carrier practices overlaid with full service end product,” David said.
Virgin Australia, Tigerair Australia and Qantas’s low-cost unit Jetstar currently schedule 30-minute turns for most of their domestic flights and use dual-door boarding.
Direct from Qantas presentation (latest on turn around times). Seems they got it half right at least about the low-cost carrier practices.
A benefit of $1.6 million/week for meeting shorter turnaround times. The cascading cost issues from plane delays in leaving the gate leading to delays for every subsequent flight from that gate & at destination airports is much higher than the cost a one-off flight from SYD to MEL that is likely carrying other revenue cargo as well and may well have been a scheduled repositioning flight already.
Never let passenger convenience get in the way of 'enhancing' the senior executive bonus pool.
Mind you, the Q guardian (in the same presentation) said:
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the issue was being well-managed by the airline.
“We are not going to do this and have utilisation go through the roof and end up having customer satisfaction collapse on us,” Joyce said during the investor day.
Perhaps AJ forgot about this part in the intervening years?