Qantas to start flights from Darwin to Singapore

[CaptJCool]

But I wonder who would do the retimed DRW flight. Current QF48 arrives around midnight in Darwin. The retimed version gets into Darwin at 0430am. Not really a great time given that the flight is only 4+ hours. If you live in DRW, maybe but for connections onwards... not my choice.

When I was booking DCS runs SIN - SYD, this retimed flight always came up, sometimes about 1/2 price of SIN - SYD but looking at timings I had to say no.

I guess QF is struggling to fill the return flight. I was on QF47 twice last year (Mondays) and it had a solid loading.

Originally it was timed at 4.30am arrival to connect onto the early morning flights

It switched months out from 1 December to midnight arrival with Darwin airport QF club closing after last late flight HR of the night. Reopening at 5.30.
Checkin was firmly shut. For the duration
There are luggage lockers on the concourse which we utilised.
And slept upstairs for 3-4 hours on the couches

 

[Laptop Jockey]

Because DRW is such a small outbound market, and expensive, especially during the dry, the SIN-DRW and DRW-SIN origin/destination markets I imagine would be fairly small. What SQ can offer that QF can't is the world - Europe, North America, East Asia, SE Asia, India, South Africa. I can see why QF might struggle with limited feed to/from "the world" , especially now that 3K is gone. IIRC, it doesn't even line up with QF2.

That's the kicker, and why Royal Brunei was such an important link to the world back in the day connecting to Dubai, Frankfurt, London and the main Asian capitals directly, and often for not much more than the cost of a domestic flight to SYD/BNE/MEL. Then the various Asian LCCs came on and off in the 2010s onwards.
Qantas has always been outright predatory on the DRW international market, entering a known thin market, driving out international competitors, then cancelling the route and forcing NT residents and international visitors onto QF's wildly overpriced and highly profitable domestic flights to Darwin.

Given the isolation of the top end and the role of air travel as an essential service, there really does need to be government regulation on seat/mile pricing on designated essential/strategic routes.