New routes floated to ATH, SEA, ORD and LAS

[justinbrett]

https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/qantas-flights-to-athens-seattle-chicago-las-vegas

Sign me up for the inaugural flight to Vegas

 

[TheInsider]

It would be nice, but wow, with what aircraft?
I know staff are getting fed up with these 'announcements and rumours' and yet still, no aircraft.
Other airlines just get on with putting new routes on without a 10 year lead up.
But don't worry, QF are getting ONE A321 in about 222 days, then maybe another one about 3-4 months after that, then maybe an A350 in 3 years time.

 

[Ansett Nostalgic]

QF must be the most overhyped airline in the world.

 

[TomVexille]

QF must be the most overhyped airline in the world.

Most days I think the media department is their most successful one...

 

[AIRwin]

Most days I think the media department is their most successful one...

And Frequent Flyer?

 

[yachty]

LAS has to be a joke right?

 

[TomVexille]

And Frequent Flyer?

Yup, that's the core business

 

[justinbrett]

LAS has to be a joke right?

Yeah, as much as I'd love it, I can't see it happening. There's definitely demand (always plenty of Aussies when I've flown LAS-LAX on to Australia) but I doubt enough to fill a 787. Unless they do something like SYD-LAS-ORD but I doubt it.

SEA seems to be the one with the most promise.

 

[Ansett Nostalgic]

Where is the demand for SEA coming from?

 

[justinbrett]

Where is the demand for SEA coming from?

It's more the connections with AS. It's quite a good hub these days, and now AS is oneworld, it's a no-brainer.

 

[Lynda2475]

ORD is the most useful of those, shame BNE-ORD never started due to Covid.

Chicago is my 2nd favorite US city and would attract both tourism and business travelers.

 

[SYD]

Where is the demand for SEA coming from?

QF have the stats on onward connections from LAX, SFO, YVR etc and presumably a lot of people booking are flying onto SEA. Similarly, AS customers coming the other way would prefer non-stop codeshare over hubbing it.

When QF returned to SFO it was stated at the time it was the most popular US city that people were booking flights to but QF didn’t fly there.

 

[SCM]

They may as well announce flights to the moon - how silly.

The ambitiousness of their media announcements is inversely proportional to the quality of the offering lately.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

It’s quite a big ask of Qantas to assume passengers will want to fly on one of their C Series from Sydney to Athens. There’s just gonna be way too many refueling stops for it to be worthwhile for most travellers. Similar issue too flying Sydney to Vegas on the dash 8 with the additional issue of all that prop noise passengers have to hear for days on end

 

[Mwenenzi]

They may as well announce flights to the moon - how silly.

The ambitiousness of their media announcements is inversely proportional to the quality of the offering lately.

Please provide a link to their (that is Qantas) [route] media announcements . As opposed too some blogger.

David Flynn travelled to Toulouse as a guest of Airbus and Qantas

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For all that I consider ORD would be a success. Any route needs paid business class passengers. And many USA domestic and international flights from ORD. Air NZ used to fly AKL-ORD, but CV19 and aircraft issues ended that.

O'Hare International Airport - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

SEA in the NW corner of the lower 48 far less so for. A car ride from YVR

 

[justinbrett]

SEA in the NW corner of the lower 48 far less so for. A car ride from YVR

It's more about the AS connections, for the same reason QF flies to DFW, that's not for O/D traffic either.

AA serves 6 West Coast (CA/OR/WA) destinations from LAX. AS serves 12.

AS serves 27 from SEA. Then add Alaska, a bit of Canada and huge number of connections for the rest of the US. It's a great hub.

 

[Blackadder]

Can see the reasoning for LAS , a huge convention market plus the leisure market would get the interest of QF.

 

[jase05]

ATH is a weird one. I know MEL in particular has a large Greek population but the Greeks I know that travel back to the homeland are all pretty price conscious and it seems more of a JQ market. I know a few of them even fly with Scoot despite having the funds for better options.
Still haven’t spent any meaningful time in the US so can’t speak of what’s best but SEA does seem sensible as a hub for AS and growing that partnership.

 

[SYD]

ATH is a weird one. I know MEL in particular has a large Greek population but the Greeks I know that travel back to the homeland are all pretty price conscious and it seems more of a JQ market. I know a few of them even fly with Scoot despite having the funds for better options.

A lot of non-Greek heritage Australians are going to Greece / Med over the Oz winter. At the moment booking via QF it’s EK metal one stop all the way from most Oz capitals or two stops from the east via LHR then the old track on BA to ATH.

As I mentioned above, QF will crunching the numbers on how many PAX are going to ATH and if the numbers are there (probably seasonal), then why not. But, yes it’s probably not a business heavy market, but nor is HNL and they’ve thrown a B787 on that route.

Still haven’t spent any meaningful time in the US so can’t speak of what’s best but SEA does seem sensible as a hub for AS and growing that partnership.

SEA is the other big tech and aviation hub. The excellent onward connections with another OW partner also makes it mutually beneficial for QF and AS. I could see them rebalancing the loads across YVR, SEA, SFO and LAX but they’ll still need more planes to make it work. So I won’t hold my breath.

 

[TomVexille]

Please provide a link to their (that is Qantas) [route] media announcements . As opposed too some blogger.

Media Releases

Keep up to date with Qantas' latest news and information, media releases, articles, images and more with the Qantas News Room.

www.qantasnewsroom.com.au

https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/qantas-responds/

https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/speeches/

For all that I consider ORD would be a success. Any route needs paid business class passengers. And many USA domestic and international flights from ORD. Air NZ used to fly AKL-ORD, but CV19 and aircraft issues ended that.

O'Hare International Airport - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

SEA in the NW corner of the lower 48 far less so for. A car ride from YVR

NZ resumed ORD services in 2022. ORD is currently suspended due to the RR engine issues but due to resume in October