QF's Asia announcement

[mannej]

Our Sin-Mel flight has changed from a 747 to A330-300 and we are travelling business class. I have checked the Qantas website to see the seat configuration of the A330 and it shows these planes have skybeds in business class. Seat Maps for the Airbus 330-300 | Qantas

Is this not the case?

Yes you do have Skybeds on the 330's, but they are angled flat. The 380's and 9 of the 747's have the MKII Skybeds which are fully flat and do not angle.

 

[Pvcmenace]

All of the above being said.... Most of the complaints are about limited extra legroom seats on narrow bodied aircraft compared to wide bodied A/C. whereas fuel burn is 738 fuel burn is ~1300kg/hr and a 744 is over 9000kg/hr, I grant the 744 has greater speed and range but either way you could still fit similar to skybed mkii to a 738, 8 to a plane and 144 economy and your significantly in front.

Make these planes a320neos ex PER,ADL,CNS and DRW you've got an extremely flexible fleet. P.s. not just the 78 on order but 194 purchasing rights. All these planes means a lot of bulkhead and exit row seats for the WP traveller. And for sub 7 hour flights in a narrow body.

 

[casanovawa]

It all depends on what it's like inside! I had the dubious pleasure of travelling in the last few rows of an (I would guess relatively old) BA 747 from SIN-SYD at the start of November. It was anything but classy, reminded me of a greyhound bus. Oh how I wished I was on an SQ or QF 380 ...

I would however like to try the new 747-800 if I ever get a chance. That may be classy.

I made sure when i booked my USDM redemption for July/August that i tried to get on an LH 747-800 (FRA-LAX), so should be nice to experience, got me a seat upstairs for the first time...

 

[casanovawa]

With Asia Qantas gets screwed at this end. We have a country that is physically large and in the grand scheme of things not all that populated. From an air traffic perspective we have 2 big cities and 3 smaller ones, with some niche tourist destinations (read Gold Coast, Cairns, Darwin etc).

Australia is what it is, its a big country unlike lots of the tiny little countries in Europe or Asia which have one central point/hub that it makes sense to fly out of.. We are more like a US (withouht the population) that is large and dispersed and so one central hub will never work and that's just the fact if you want a half sensible airline network servicing the needs of a range of your potential customers, unless we get one airline with a hub on the east coast and maybe one on the west coast or something...

But being amongst the most urbanised country in the world with a very large percentage of peole in just 5 cities, doesn't that make for some advantage in how many services you need to provide as opposed to the US which would probably have 15-20 sensible routes in demand from overseas... And QF can't even manage services to 5 cities, just 3??? and hand the rest over to JQ or cancel and retreat, while at the same time Perth is getting what 4 SQ services, is it going to be a couple of EK, and MH, TG, QR, GA etc, etc?? And while yes some of these will be feeding on to further destinations a decent amount of people must be just doing the point to point trip and i wouldn't be surprised because of the product, reputation, equipment and marketing etc, that they are placing QF low on their list of preferred airlines... There are two ways you can go with, keep giving up and handing over routes or fight harder for the bums on seats... Which doesn't mean doubling JQ flights, or not that solely alone...

I'm often surprised when i look at things like Lonely Planet and look at countries in Europe that for all the hundreds of millions of people most of those countries don't have more than about 3 cities over the 1 million mark, many more than us in the 300,000-1 million range of course, but we have 5 cities over 1 million, i would have thought that would have actually clustered them nicely to reduce the amount of routes you need to fly, if you can just convince them to use your service rather than the competitors....

 

[ajw373]

Australia is what it is, its a big country unlike lots of the tiny little countries in Europe or Asia which have one central point/hub that it makes sense to fly out of.. We are more like a US (withouht the population) that is large and dispersed and so one central hub will never work and that's just the fact if you want a half sensible airline network servicing the needs of a range of your potential customers, unless we get one airline with a hub on the east coast and maybe one on the west coast or something...

Exactly. Quite clearly the hub on the east is Sydney or Melbourne, for access to the Pacific and US but still people whinge. But clearly there is no hub in the west for access to Asia. That hub could well be Perth or it may just as well be in Asia somewhere. But without a hub to feed into and from there is no way that Qantas can justify multiple flights a day and in some cases (Adelaide) even a single flight a day. The fact that others can, for example SQ's multitude of flights a day to multiple Australian cities doesn't mean an airline like Qantas can do the same if it doesn't have somewhere else to take them.

 

[TonyHancock]

I don't actually know the answer, but would a better comparison be between QF and Air Canada? I know nothing about the latter. My comment is based upon the population and geographic size, and population dispersal. (i.e. Cities a fair way apart....that said Vancouver is not quite as remote as Perth.) It might be stretching it a bit because of the proximity of The US, but i wondered if even this could be compared to Asia's proximity to Australia.

Just a thought!

 

[Isochronous]

I think Markis10 did an analysis upthread and the short answer was - "not enough seats and capacity to replace the ageing/retiring fleet", plus losing your economy of scale of crewing that you get with the bigger aircraft like 777, 748, A333 and A380.

I wonder if they could have got some 748s on the cheap from Boeing as compensation for the 787 delays.

 

[JohnK]

Make these planes a320neos ex PER,ADL,CNS and DRW you've got an extremely flexible fleet. P.s. not just the 78 on order but 194 purchasing rights. All these planes means a lot of bulkhead and exit row seats for the WP traveller. And for sub 7 hour flights in a narrow body.

I don't know much about A320neos but are these single aisle aircraft? They are seriously considering using them for 7 hours flights? My goodness that is a long time for someone to spend in row 29 sitting behind the serial recliner in row 28.

Is it considered a complaint/whinge to dislike an aircraft and only want to fly a certain aircraft? Surely people are entitled to choose what they prefer and others should not criticise their choice.

 

[JohnK]

See for the links to the QF FAQ's on this upthread - you have considerable flexibility, right down to the full refund of ordinarily non-refundable fares.

Booking cancelled and I have been promised full refund. No longer appears in my bookings either and allocated seats have also been released which is good sign.

Rebooked again and this time I have somehow managed to get 36G in premium economy on SYD-SIN leg and hope this sticks.

 

[yohy?!]

I don't know much about A320neos but are these single aisle aircraft? They are seriously considering using them for 7 hours flights? My goodness that is a long time for someone to spend in row 29 sitting behind the serial recliner in row 28.

Is it considered a complaint/whinge to dislike an aircraft and only want to fly a certain aircraft? Surely people are entitled to choose what they prefer and others should not criticise their choice.

yup single aisle goodness the NEOs and MAXs seem to be more marketing speak for minor tweaks rather than substantial design changes...

 

[Awesom Andy]

Speaking of hubs, if DRW was a nicer airport without the ridiculously high charges, it would make a nice narrow body hub, especially for an LCC. Send one flight that way from ADL, MEL, SYD, BNE, and then may be also CNS, CBR, OOL, have them all meet up within 60mins of each other, and then send them off to CGK, DPS, SIN, KUL, BKK, MNL, SGN, etc. Not sure about ex-PER though, it probably makes more sense to just drop straight into SIN and connect from there.

 

[oz_mark]

yup single aisle goodness the NEOs and MAXs seem to be more marketing speak for minor tweaks rather than substantial design changes...

The choice seems to be tweak now or wait 10 to 15 years for an all new design. And we know how good the makers are at all new designs....

 

[serfty]

...

Is this not the case?

There's a difference between Skybed Mk 1 (Flat but at an angle to the floor) and Skybed Mk II (Flat, parallel with the floor).

I am happy (can sleep quite well) with either and both are far better than 'down the back'.

 

[ajw373]

I don't know much about A320neos but are these single aisle aircraft? They are seriously considering using them for 7 hours flights? My goodness that is a long time for someone to spend in row 29 sitting behind the serial recliner in row 28.

Is it considered a complaint/whinge to dislike an aircraft and only want to fly a certain aircraft? Surely people are entitled to choose what they prefer and others should not criticise their choice.

Yes A320neo are single isle, (neo just means New Engine Option) and fear not there are already routes out there pushing the 6-7 hour mark that are already run by single isle aircraft. Two such flights I have done in recent times is Houston to Port of Spain taking 6 hours on a UA 737 (well really CO) and Istanbul to Islamabad taking 5.5 hours on a TK 737. Fortunately I was up the pointy end though even then it wasn't much chop, in both cases Qantas domestic 737 seats have it over them both.

Though down the back I don't really see how much different sitting in a 737 or an A320 could be compared to a wide body. For example QF 737 is 3+3 and QF 747 3+4+3, provided the physical seats are the same, have the same pitch and the same IFE system is used how is it different? I guess our dislike comes from the fact that we associate narrow bodies with domestic and domestic product and wide bodies with international product.

 

[mannej]

For the markets you are referring to (losing the 330 flights), the 2-4-2 eats all
Over any 320 config full stop.

But sorry I agree with JohnK on this one, the narrow body's aren't the best for these AU-Asia routes as being suggested (DPS/Indonesia ok).

 

[MEL_Traveller]

For the markets you are referring to (losing the 330 flights), the 2-4-2 eats all
Over any 320 config full stop.

But sorry I agree with JohnK on this one, the narrow body's aren't the best for these AU-Asia routes as being suggested (DPS/Indonesia ok).

maybe not for economy. but for premium, nice wide aisle, 1+1 full flat beds, ability to instal a large forward lavatory (as ANA has done on their biz jets) and every seat with window and aisle access. could be ok.

 

[dk4]

Speaking of hubs, if DRW was a nicer airport without the ridiculously high charges, it would make a nice narrow body hub, especially for an LCC...

Did you not realise that what you outline, is effectively what Jetstar has been doing viaDRW for quite some time now?

 

[codash1099]

maybe not for economy. but for premium, nice wide aisle, 1+1 full flat beds, ability to instal a large forward lavatory (as ANA has done on their biz jets) and every seat with window and aisle access. could be ok.

Do you really think they would do that? It would be same old same old.

 

[yohy?!]

Did you not realise that what you outline, is effectively what Jetstar has been doing viaDRW for quite some time now?

don't think it has worked too well for them though, i notice they have stopped selling SIN-DRW-SYD for example in favour of putting people on the SIN-MEL-SYD A330 flights. (the 4am transit might have something to do with it also...)

understandable really as doing this type of long trip on a narrow body would probably put you off a second time - as others said precisely what the A330 is designed for...more comfort on mid range routes. maybe a good compromise would be 737s to DRW to connect to A330s based in SIN that would do SIN-DRW-PEK-SIN for example that would certainly get the utilisation hours up (think CX does this on routes like HKG-TPE-NRT or HKG-SIN-BKK)

 

[dk4]

don't think it has worked too well for them though, i notice they have stopped selling SIN-DRW-SYD for example...

And they pulled out of DRW-SGN too. (Perhaps I should have said "trying to do" )