Well first of all, there are thousands of Aussies/Kiwis living/working in the UAE (and neighbouring gulf countries - so they do not have to "go" anywhere.
Secondly, there are a host of OneWorld and other partner connecting flights from DXB - namely Air Berlin, Royal Jordanian, S7, Kingfisher, CX and BA.
Winner route for sure (preferably ex-MEL)
Lets do the sums on this? Lets say each one of the ex-pats flies home once per year. That means to fill 300 seats a day you would need 109500 ex-pats in the area. This is of course assume all 300 a day would want to fly to a single destination and all want to take their turn at flying home to even things out.
Reality is Emirates has ~10 flights a day to 4 or 5 Australian cities, so Qantas would have no a hope in hell of filling a single aircraft a day.
As for connection options, why would Qantas want to connect with those airlines in the gulf?
Looking at them individually lets start with CX. Can write this connection off straight away because NO ONE will fly to Dubai on Qantas then CX to Hong Kong when both clearly fly direct to Hong Kong from multiple Australian cities
Kingfisher, would be better to connect in Singapore which is Qantas's major O/S hub.
Air Berlin, rumor has it Qantas will change German flights to Berlin when the new Berlin opens next year, so that's where Qantas will connect with them. In the meantime Bangkok is a more direct connection point.
S7 would think that like Air Berlin Bangkok would be a more logical connection point.
BA, why would passengers want to change aircraft in Dubai when there are already 6 BA/Qantas through flights a day through other ports. One more connection would make SFA difference.
And lastly Royal Jordanian, yes good connection to get to Jordan, but beyond Jordan it would mean changing twice. In fact if Qantas were to add a middle east destination Amman would be the perfect port thus allowing access to Royal Jordanian with a single change rather than trying to compete with Emirates or Ethiad in their own back yard.
