Article: Australia-USA Flights at 50% of Pre-COVID Capacity

[levelnine]

To your question I doubt many seats will be reserved ex AKL, they are competing head to head with NZ which will put pressure on fares, QF will get a much better margin ex SYD.

Not sure where that idle speculation comes from. QF will sell any seat they can get.

They are competing against heaps of one-stop options from East Coast Australia to JFK.



Currently possible to buy at least 9 seats in every fare class ex-AKL:

 

[justinbrett]

Currently possible to buy at least 9 seats in every fare class ex-AKL:

Well that's not true and your screenshot confirms it.

For Jul 7th (same date as your screenshot)

AKL-JFK J9 C2 D0 I0
SYD-JFK J9 C9 D9 I1

Not worried about Y because having 9 in every fare class doesn't mean much when you're talking about Y in a 787.

 

[levelnine]

Well that's not true and your screenshot confirms it.

For Jul 7th (same date as your screenshot)

AKL-JFK J9 C2 D0 I0
SYD-JFK J9 C9 D9 I1

Not worried about Y because having 9 in every fare class doesn't mean much when you're talking about Y in a 787.

What do you mean you're 'not worried about Y'? You made a statement alleging a fact: 'I doubt many seats will be reserved ex AKL'. You don't worry about those parts that are incorrect lol?

Qantas are reserving plenty of seats ex AKL.

You also said 'they are competing head to head with NZ which will put pressure on fares, QF will get a much better margin ex SYD.'

Qantas are in fact competing with more carriers ex SYD.

 

[justinbrett]

What do you mean you're 'not worried about Y'? You made a statement alleging a fact: 'I doubt many seats will be reserved ex AKL'. You don't worry about those parts that are incorrect lol?

Qantas are reserving plenty of seats ex AKL.

You also said 'they are competing head to head with NZ which will put pressure on fares, QF will get a much better margin ex SYD.'

Qantas are in fact competing with more carriers ex SYD.

You do know the way the GDS works, the seats in each bucket are not coughulative?

So if 9 Y buckets have 9 seats, that doesn't mean there's 81 seats. It could be as low as 9 seats, as seats available in lower buckets can also be displayed in higher buckets.

There is no way to tell exactly how many Y seats are reserved for ex-AKL. This is all commercial in confidence stuff, I merely made a speculation - which seems to have proven true for the J buckets which are more easily tracked.

That is why I'm not worried about Y, as even if they show up all 9s, we can't deduce anything of value for an aircraft that big.

I do maintain QF will get a better margin ex SYD, as most people will view the direct flight as a superior option to transiting via another US city, and certainly than via Asia / ME. Not all, but enough will be happy to pay a premium for the direct service, just as they will when sunrise starts and it becomes non-stop.

Whilst direct flights aren't as good as non-stops, they are still superior to standard connections - just as we see on QF1/9 & BA16.

 

[levelnine]

There is no way to tell exactly how many Y seats are reserved for ex-AKL.

The Y fare buckets are identical ex AKL and ex SYD on the random day I chose. That suggests there is no difference in the number of Y seats being reserved.

It's also the same with W.

SYD-JFK 7 July
J9 C9 D9 I1 U0 W9 R9 T9 Z0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O0 G0 X0 E0

AKL-JFK 7 July
J9 C2 D0 I0 U0 W9 R9 T9 Z0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O0 G0 X0 E0

And you know we can see your previous posts, right?

You didn't speculate that the same seats are reserved ex AKL & ex SYD.

You speculated that not 'many seats will be reserved ex AKL'.

There are, in fact, heaps of in J, W & Y seats for sale ex AKL.

Also, their margin can't be that great ex SYD. They're having to price their Y fares the same as their American, Indian, South American, etc competitors and cheaper than their Asian competitors. Edit: They're getting a bit of a premium in J on some days.

 

[justinbrett]

The Y fare buckets are identical ex AKL and ex SYD on the random day I chose. That suggests there is no difference in the number of Y seats being reserved.

It's also the same with W.

SYD-JFK 7 July
J9 C9 D9 I1 U0 W9 R9 T9 Z0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O0 G0 X0 E0

AKL-JFK 7 July
J9 C2 D0 I0 U0 W9 R9 T9 Z0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O0 G0 X0 E0

And you know we can see your previous posts, right?

You didn't speculate that the same seats are reserved ex AKL & ex SYD.

You speculated that not 'many seats will be reserved ex AKL'.

There are, in fact, heaps of in J, W & Y seats for sale ex AKL.

Also, their margin can't be that great ex SYD. They're having to price their Y fares the same as their American, Indian, South American, etc competitors and cheaper than their Asian competitors. Edit: They're getting a bit of a premium in J on some days.

I said I doubt (speculation) that many (a subjective amount I didn't specify) would be reserved for AKL-JFK.

The GDS only shows there's at least 9 seats on sale for each cabin (so you can't say there's heaps, unless you classify 9 as heaps) - and we can clearly see that the J fares are very restricted, with only 2 seats at the second highest bucket available, and 9 seats at full J fare (which could include the lower 2).

My statement was subjective and I stand by it.

 

[levelnine]

My statement was subjective and I stand by it.

And I've shown there are many. And why do you keep forgetting about W & Y?

Indeed, what you've shown doesn't actually indicate there are any restrictions. All it indicates is that they're not selling discount J fare classes. Qantas may very well be willing to sell every single J seat to AKL-JFK, as long as those people are willing to pay a higher fare class.

I would speculate the situation is precisely the opposite from what you suggested.

Ex AKL is the route that commands the highest premium because there is only one competitor: NZ. Both offer non-stop products.

By contrast, ex SYD the route is one stop and therefore there are many competitors: DL, UA, AC, NZ, JL, NH, etc etc. As well as Qantas' own offerings via DFW & LAX combined with AA for the domestic connection.

My guess is one of the reasons Qantas went back to JFK via AKL rather than pre-COVID LAX is because AKL gives them the ability to compete against NZ in the New Zealand market where premiums are high due to the lack of competition, especially to JFK, while the previous routing through LAX meant they had to cede all that traffic to NZ.

 

[justinbrett]

And I've shown there are many. And why do you keep forgetting about W & Y?

Indeed, what you've shown doesn't actually indicate there are any restrictions. All it indicates is that they're not selling discount J fare classes. Qantas may very well be willing to sell every single J seat to AKL-JFK, as long as those people are willing to pay a higher fare class.

I would speculate the situation is precisely the opposite from what you suggested.

Ex AKL is the route that commands the highest premium because there is only one competitor: NZ. Both offer non-stop products.

By contrast, ex SYD the route is one stop and therefore there are many competitors: DL, UA, AC, NZ, JL, NH, etc etc. As well as Qantas' own offerings via DFW & LAX combined with AA for the domestic connection.

My guess is one of the reasons Qantas went back to JFK via AKL rather than pre-COVID LAX is because AKL gives them the ability to compete against NZ in the New Zealand market where premiums are high due to the lack of competition, especially to JFK, while the previous routing through LAX meant they had to cede all that traffic to NZ.

You've shown there's at least 9. If you class that as many, then fine. I don't, and since I was the one who made the speculation, then I continue to stand by it.

I think the reason QF went to AKL instead of LAX as it bypasses the LAX stopover which required full immigration & baggage checks, a constant beef, and required long haul connections from BNE and MEL to be timed to work. AKL eliminates this with international transit, and the ability to time much shorter international connecting flights to AKL. It also does allow them to pick up pax ex AKL - and I never said it didn't - but given the option QF would rather take pax from AU if that means higher fares.

On the 7th of July, in Y, the lowest oneway fare ex SYD is almost double the lowest fare ex AKL in Y (using Y since you want me to talk about Y). A$2129 vs A$1236. This backs up my point that they need to match NZ's fares ex AKL (which they have) but can charge whatever they like ex SYD because they know people will pay it.

Of course the inventory can be dynamically adjusted so if SYD sales are slow and AKL sales are good, they can allocate more seats to AKL - but that's a gamble they won't get the AU sales. I think they'll do very well ex AU (if they were worried, they'd be dropping the fare), so if the AKL seats sell out, they very well might not add more and prefer to get the AU sales.

It is my opinion, you're free to disagree. The truth is neither of us know the answer, that information is commercial in confidence. It might become apparent after the route has been launched, but it's certainly not known now.

 

[levelnine]

You've shown there's at least 9. If you class that as many, then fine. I don't, and since I was the one who made the speculation, then I continue to stand by it.

All you've shown is that Qantas has fewer discount J fares ex AKL, which doesn't prove that they are restricting the number of seats and does prove that they're trying to extract a higher J fare class from the ex AKL market.

the lowest oneway fare ex SYD

And anyone who knows anything about aviation knows that oneway international fares are not representative of anything.

When we look at return legs across the year, we see that SYD-JFK is often being sold for less than SYD-AKL + AKL-JFK, which suggests they're extracting a premium from the SYD-AKL & AKL-JFK legs. Which makes sense. Far less competition on those routes than SYD-JFK, which is flooded with options and will only get worse as the Chinese carriers ramp up capacity.

I think they'll do very well ex AU

My guess is it'll be one of the laggard routes of the group, of which there are many in the generally poor-performing international division, where we'll see plenty of ability to release award seats and good cash discounts following light loads. Fortunately for QF, it only has to hold out a couple more years until it can drop it. Once Sunrise comes on board, it will then have a unique offering where it should be able to command some premium, especially in J & F.

 

[justinbrett]

All you've shown is that Qantas has fewer discount J fares ex AKL, which doesn't prove that they are restricting the number of seats and does prove that they're trying to extract a higher J fare class from the ex AKL market.

Yes - as I've said in every post, it's my opinion/speculation, I never attempted to prove anything, as I don't believe it can be proven, because again - this is commercial in confidence information. We simply don't know how many seats are reserved ex-AKL. It could be just 10 in each cabin, it could be up to 100. No idea.

The ex-AKL market is pretty small (if QF wanted to tap into that, it would have much better success flying AKL-DFW year-round and tap into AA's network and not compete directly with NZ, which I assume most Kiwis would prefer to fly) - or fly AKL-LAX as it used to.

My guess is it'll be one of the laggard routes of the group, of which there are many in the generally poor-performing international division, where we'll see plenty of ability to release award seats and good cash discounts following light loads. Fortunately for QF, it only has to hold out a couple more years until it can drop it. Once Sunrise comes on board, it will then have a unique offering where it should be able to command some premium, especially in J & F.

We shall see. People said that about PER-LHR too. This makes a lot more sense than SYD-LAX-JFK with now unrestricted traffic rights for the entire flight and a much more pleasant transit experience than the dreaded LAX.