There was talks JL was looking to move SYD-NRT to HND and opening a 2nd Australian destination, again either MEL or BNE so maybe QF operating HND services elsewhere might make sense as both JL and QF would provide both options of HND and NRT. In the case of MEL & BNE lets have a look:
- BNE: People love to bunch BNE with the whole of SE Queensland (for larger population pool), and since we are looking at SE Queensland as a whole, JQ currently already offers daily OOL-NRT services, I think this caters well for leisure (and some business) passengers. Why doesn't JQ operate the services out of BNE? Is it because the market is generally low yielding and better suited for OOL? What is the case that BNE needs a direct link to Tokyo? What businesses are there? Whats the Premium load breakdown? I believe the Japanese traffic in recent years have seen a major shift towards Cairns with SE Queensland being more attractive to Mainland Chinese visitors, so that might see a shift in demand.
- MEL: Jetstar currently offers MEL-NRT x4 weekly, it seems the flights are doing rather well and pushing up Japanese arrivals into Melbourne, with last month alone, bumping Japanese arrivals up 80%. My guess is, QF maybe getting a feel for the demand of MEL-NRT and is probably testing the market with the less riskier JQ flights first before committing to its own mainline services, we could see JQ bump off and QF step in. However the current JQ schedule links up well with GK and optimises connections at both ends (besides the awful midnight arrival into MEL!) in MEL (outbound) and NRT. Or QF could supplement with an extra x3 weekly services to make MEL daily.
Either way, I think both JL & QF are about to announce something big, both will announce new routes launches and schedule changes.