QF re-expands MEL-CNS

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maninblack

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There have been some debates in previous threads about the future of the MEL-CNS route. QF were flying A330's for the winter season on this route a few years ago, then after the introduction of JQ they dropped back to a single daily 738 service. For this year they have gone up to a daily 763 service. Either they are expecting higher numbers or JQ isn't flourishing on this route. I don't know if JQ has decreased its flights.

I am also told that JQ is having huge problems filling their international legs now through Easter with as few as 50 booked on many flights. the problems of running a new tourist based airline with big aircraft during low season I suppose.
 
maninblack said:
I don't know if JQ has decreased its flights.

I don't what the case was in 2006, but when I booked my parents on MEL-CNS flights in about Aug 05, QF had the daily 738, and JQ had two flights on some days of the week - they now seem to be back to a single daily flight (IIRC, in 2006 they also only had the single daily).

maninblack said:
I am also told that JQ is having huge problems filling their international legs now through Easter with as few as 50 booked on many flights. the problems of running a new tourist based airline with big aircraft during low season I suppose.

Hard to substantiate such rumours, but it could well be the case outside peaks (eg school holidays), when "full service" airlines such as SQ, TG & MH have the capacity to offer competitive fares, and possibly less budget constrained travellers (ie those without school aged children) who travel at non-peak times also means that it is possible that JQ are struggling with loads on some flights.
 
dajop said:
Hard to substantiate such rumours, but it could well be the case outside peaks (eg school holidays), when "full service" airlines such as SQ, TG & MH have the capacity to offer competitive fares, and possibly less budget constrained travellers (ie those without school aged children) who travel at non-peak times also means that it is possible that JQ are struggling with loads on some flights.
Qantas publish their load factors, broken down by group, each month. One place this info can be found is in their update to the ASX. So their average load factor will be public knowledge very shortly. They also publish it on the Qantas web site at About Qantas - Investors - Traffic & Capacity Stats but th eposting here can be a little delayed.
 
NM said:
Qantas publish their load factors, broken down by group, each month. One place this info can be found is in their update to the ASX. So their average load factor will be public knowledge very shortly. They also publish it on the Qantas web site at About Qantas - Investors - Traffic & Capacity Stats but th eposting here can be a little delayed.

As someone who pays very close attention to these numbers, I can confidently pick that they won't be particularly illuminating. Jetstar will bundle the international and domestic numbers together, and because their are so many more seats domestically, the system-wide seat factor will not be severely skewed (4 x international A330 = 7 x domestic A320). We have our own independent analysis of Jetstar's domestic load factors, from which we can back out the long haul numbers, which I may make public if someone asks nicely ;)

cheers

CrazyDave98
 
As a Cairns local, any increase in QF capacity is to be welcomed. The Jetstar international service which replaced QF on the CNS-DRW-SIN route has come in for a lot of local criticism. Every taxi driver I have come across in both DRW and CNS has a horror story of English tourists expecting QF service and being dumped on to Jetstar in SIN to their surprise on their way to CNS.

Furthermore, the ability to ride domestic on the QF flight from CNS-DRW is no more - the reason appears to be cos Jetstar is using a SIN based aircraft with the letters Asia painted out and asian based crew, thus representing job losses to Australian crews. So there is an overall 50% reduction in domestic capacity CNS-DRW.

Of course there is no star class either since they are using the A320 in economy config. on this service.

Next we'll start to lose the QF SYD/BNE-CNS-japan flights :evil:
 
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Both weekend papers on Sat / Sun plus today's Monday running ads for Star Class to anywhere. I know of 3 people on different flights and were all flying Star class, 1 to HON, only person there and one of 3 on way back. The other 2 were to BKK, less than 3 on all 4 legs.
 
crazydave98 said:
As someone who pays very close attention to these numbers, I can confidently pick that they won't be particularly illuminating. Jetstar will bundle the international and domestic numbers together, and because their are so many more seats domestically, the system-wide seat factor will not be severely skewed (4 x international A330 = 7 x domestic A320). We have our own independent analysis of Jetstar's domestic load factors, from which we can back out the long haul numbers, which I may make public if someone asks nicely ;)

cheers

CrazyDave98
A quick look at the DJ site shows that unlike QF who do break down the performance of routes by Int/Dom/Regional and JQ...DJ simply "bundle" Dom and Pacific Blue together...that wouldnt be hiding anything would it ;) .
Also what do you mean by 'Independant analysis' means you read Dept of transport data which is readily available Route by route or someone is hiding in a potplant and counting heads...which is it
 
Probly both of those methods and more ...

You can also record a competitor's fare bucket availability on an ongoing basis then do an analysis with the accumulated data.

Note that JQ only go up to 4, DJ to 7 and QF to 9.

e.g. The day before a scheduled flight, with QF, J4 D2 I0 Y4 B0 ... may mean a nearly full aircraft in the Business and Economy cabins, while the same with JQ Int probably means quite full down the back but not so full up the front.
 
garyjohn951 said:
Both weekend papers on Sat / Sun plus today's Monday running ads for Star Class to anywhere.

That as it may be - BUT - on the CNS-DRW-SIN route they are using an A320 in one class economy which is an Jetstar Asia aircraft with the word Asia pianted out (very poorly).

Given those ads you saw it sounds like they are advertising a service which they are not delivering at least on this local route.

They are also not providing the service people from europe have paid for holding full service QF tickets by dumpimng them off to Jetstar once they get to SIN.
 
Standby said:
A quick look at the DJ site shows that unlike QF who do break down the performance of routes by Int/Dom/Regional and JQ...DJ simply "bundle" Dom and Pacific Blue together...that wouldnt be hiding anything would it ;) .

Fair call, I guess it is bundled and therefore hidden. The difference is Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue (and Polynesian Blue) is all the one business model (identically configured B737NGs, same terms & conditions etc.) while Jetstar International is evidently quite different to Jetstar shorthaul (which includes trans-Tasman operations).

Standby said:
Also what do you mean by 'Independant analysis' means you read Dept of transport data which is readily available Route by route or someone is hiding in a potplant and counting heads...which is it

The DOTARS data only gives the aggregate for the route, so where there are two airlines operating a route, you need data for one to work out the other.
 
As the Jetstar website allows you to book up to 50 tix at once or all 30 Starclass seats on a flight it is easy to see whether a particular flight has 50 plus seats available. I randomly checked half a doz international flights for next week and they all had at least 50 seats available and all but one had 25+ starclass available. Interesting. I have nothing against Jetstar but I would hate to see too many QF routes dumped and I also wonder about its year round viability with 303 seat aircraft on certain routes.

I wonder whether the Jetstar 787's will all be 2 class and will get used for higher demand domestic services too. Like winter MEL/SYD-CNS or OOL or even MEL-SYD with a domestic Starclass, that would be good.
 
crazydave98 said:
The DOTARS data only gives the aggregate for the route, so where there are two airlines operating a route, you need data for one to work out the other.

In other words, for many routes you would have pretty good data for what the competition is doing (and vice versa). I guess it would be harder to differentiate loads on JQ & QF individually on routes both operate like MEL-HBA, SYD-OOL etc.
 
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