Unpublicised May 2018 flight frequency reductions

[Melburnian1]

May traditionally is one of the lower demand months for international travel on Australian routes.

QF seems to be cutting some frequencies on what have lately been daily routes.

QF79 MEL - NRT is not operating today (22 May) nor on 29 or 30 May.

QF23 SYD - BKK is similarly not running today, and nor is QF97 BNE - HKG.

QF61 BNE - NRT is not scheduled tomorrow.

All these are usually A333 flights (qualification: occasionally QF23 reverts to A332.)

 

[Happy Trails]

FWIW, today's QF23 was cancelled back around January.

 

[Isolar]

Question for those that keep tabs on these things. How likely are these kind of cancellations (low demand) in June & July? How much notice is usually given?

I'm a bit apprehensive as I've got flights to and from Japan with separate tickets out of Japan in between. Could be a major spanner in the works if my booked flights are canned.

 

[mviy]

QF generally does a good job of cancelling flights a long way out if there's insufficient demand (see Happy Trails's post above for example). Low cost carriers such as Jetstar are much more willing to cancel flights closer to the time.

QF's computer would predict how full flights are likely to be based on tickets sold and projected sales between now and the flight. I would expect if the figure is too low they'd manually review it and select the flights to cancel and offer to move passengers to flights on similar days. This could push those flights on similar days above the minimum number of passengers to be viable to run.

If they don't have demand for e.g. MEL-NRT but do for NRT-MEL they do need to make sure they have the plane in NRT needed to fly NRT-MEL if they wish that flight to go ahead. So depending how profitable a full flight would be it can still make sense to fly a plane with a lower load in one direction sometimes.

Of course flights can still be cancelled due to unexpected problems such as major mechanical issues.

 

[offshore171]

Question for those that keep tabs on these things. How likely are these kind of cancellations (low demand) in June & July?

June/July there’s always a demand surge due to Australian school holidays coinciding with the northern summer.

If there are cancellations in July, they are unlikely to be demand related.

 

[Isolar]

Thanks for the feedback guys. The flights look very lightly loaded in Y but reasonable in business. I'll keep checking periodically to be on the safe side but probably nothing to worry about at this stage.

 

[offshore171]

Thanks for the feedback guys. The flights look very lightly loaded in Y but reasonable in business. I'll keep checking periodically to be on the safe side but probably nothing to worry about at this stage.

You checking this on Expertflyer?

 

[mannej]

Thanks for the feedback guys. The flights look very lightly loaded in Y but reasonable in business. I'll keep checking periodically to be on the safe side but probably nothing to worry about at this stage.

Are you using the seat map to track this?

 

[Melburnian1]

Thanks for all the responses. I didn't explain it very well in the original post, but it was really that for those who assume that these flights are daily the whole of the year, it's not always the case.

Feb and Nov tend to be the other lower demand months. This may also apply to a degree domestically.

 

[Isolar]

You checking this on Expertflyer?

Are you using the seat map to track this?

Mainly Expert Flyer flight availability combined with the seat map (though the seat map by itself is not good indicator - particularly in economy). Every booking code is showing 9 at the moment.

 

[Austman]

QF23 SYD - BKK is similarly not running today

Maybe this is seasonal? Maybe it's for maintenance?

My QF24 (BKK-SYD) was cancelled in May 2017, months ahead of the booked flight. I moved over to the code-shared EK flight which ended up being very lightly loaded.