QLD- NSW Border re-opening - Do CBR and NTL get uplift?

[motef]

Musing on the announcement today by the Qld Premier of the reopening of Qld borders from Nov 3 to all residents of NSW unless you have been in one of the 32 Greater Sydney LGAs in the last 14 days does this potentially mean that temporarily CBR and NTL become BNE hubs as you cant fly from SYD?

Would we expect to see more CBR- BNE and NTL-BNE flights and an up gauge in aircraft?

 

[BNEFlyer]

The ACT has been open to QLD for a few weeks now, and both CBR-BNE and NTL-BNE are pretty much at pre-Covid levels.

 

[AIRwin]

The ACT has been open to QLD for a few weeks now, and both CBR-BNE and NTL-BNE are pretty much at pre-Covid levels.

Flight frequency or loads or both?

 

[motef]

The ACT has been open to QLD for a few weeks now, and both CBR-BNE and NTL-BNE are pretty much at pre-Covid levels.

At the moment on Qantas website, there are no NTL-BNE-NTL flights on QF metal and only one flight per day on JQ

Post automatically merged: Oct 30, 2020

Flight frequency or loads or both?

As in my post before this the frequency out of NTL on QF at the moment and into Dec is zero
and 1 per day on JQ

 

[dk4]

A few years back, I was on a QF B737 which did an emergency landing into NTL. The pilots tried to land in SYD twice, failed, circled, ran out of fuel and declared an emergency... then instead of circling around for a 3rd go at SYD, they flew straight into NTL, with fire engines screaming around us when we eventual made our uneventful landing.

Anyway, aside from all the other issues, once on the ground we all discovered that Qantas doesn't have any stairs which are suitable to connect to a B737! After all it is a Qantaslink port. So the poor Qantaslink ground staff ran around looking for some big stairs, and decided to grab one off Jetstar.

Well... A320s are a sightly different height to a B737, so their fixed stairs don't quite line up correctly with the doors on a B737. Although they were close enough for the staff to hop over the few centimetres and discuss the situation with the crew, this gap presented too much of an OH&S style issue for passengers.

It was quite late at night by now, and all the Virgin staff had gone home, but somehow, someone managed to swipe a set of VA B737 stairs and we all got off!

Moral of the story, there are possibly all sorts of logistical reasons for why Qantas does what it does beyond our scope as mere passengers.

 

[AIRwin]

At the moment on Qantas website, there are no NTL-BNE-NTL flights on QF metal and only one flight per day on JQ

Post automatically merged: Oct 30, 2020

As in my post before this the frequency out of NTL on QF at the moment and into Dec is zero
and 1 per day on JQ

VA is moving to double frequencies between BNE and NTL from 3 to 6 flights a week...

 

[Melburnian1]

Slightly related is that today when (rightly) criticising the Queensland election-facing Premier for her 'political' decision, Alan Joyce commented that in November QFd (I suspect he meant QFd plus JQd) had hoped to operate 'more than 1000 flights' between Sydney and Queensland destinations in November 2020. That's an average of about 33 a day (presumably each way): lowest day typically Saturdays, then maybe Sunday and Tuesday in that order.

Today (30 October, a Friday) there was one QF Group SYD - CNS and two SYD - BNE. Shockingly low, and must be costing a motza with stabled aircraft and all associated costs, even if the staff are on JobKeeper as QF defers voluntary or compulsory redundancies.

(The Sydney - Melbourne route is just as bad).

 

[justinbrett]

The ACT has been open to QLD for a few weeks now, and both CBR-BNE and NTL-BNE are pretty much at pre-Covid levels.

NTL-BNE is most certainly not at pre-covid levels.

Pre-covid was JQ; 3x daily, QLK: 2-3x daily and VA: 2x daily.

As of now, we have JQ: 1x daily, QLK: 1x daily and VA: 6x weekly (no Sunday flight - ruling them out for weekend trips)

The JQ base at NTL has been disbanded so we may never see the pre-covid levels return

A few years back, I was on a QF B737 which did an emergency landing into NTL. The pilots tried to land in SYD twice, failed, circled, ran out of fuel and declared an emergency... then instead of circling around for a 3rd go at SYD, they flew straight into NTL, with fire engines screaming around us when we eventual made our uneventful landing.

Anyway, aside from all the other issues, once on the ground we all discovered that Qantas doesn't have any stairs which are suitable to connect to a B737! After all it is a Qantaslink port. So the poor Qantaslink ground staff ran around looking for some big stairs, and decided to grab one off Jetstar.

Well... A320s are a sightly different height to a B737, so their fixed stairs don't quite line up correctly with the doors on a B737. Although they were close enough for the staff to hop over the few centimetres and discuss the situation with the crew, this gap presented too much of an OH&S style issue for passengers.

It was quite late at night by now, and all the Virgin staff had gone home, but somehow, someone managed to swipe a set of VA B737 stairs and we all got off!

Moral of the story, there are possibly all sorts of logistical reasons for why Qantas does what it does beyond our scope as mere passengers.

The RAAF have stairs to fit the 737 (the VIP BBJs come through every now and again). Often if there’s a QF mainline diversion the RAAF assist (there was a 747 not that long ago). The civil apron isn’t really suited to widebodies so the RAAF side is easier.