Qantas is scheduling daily flights from Los Angeles to Brisbane departing at 10.20am in the morning from next May, offering customers a unique daylight option when travelling westbound from the United States to Australia.

The flights will be operated by Airbus A330-200s, which will have to be weight-restricted due to the length of these flights. In addition, as there are no crew rests installed on this aircraft type, Qantas will block at least one Business Class seat and 20 Economy seats per flight to use as crew rest facilities.

Qantas had originally planned to resume Brisbane-Los Angeles flights in December 2021, but this date was pushed back due to a lack of demand. This isn’t surprising, given the Queensland government only removed quarantine requirements for inbound international arrivals just over a week ago. The route is now scheduled to resume from 1 April 2022, just in time for the Easter school holidays.

From 1 April, Qantas will initially run a single daily Airbus A330-200 service in both directions with the following schedule:

• QF15 Brisbane 20:30 – Los Angeles 17:00
• QF16 Los Angeles 21:40 – Brisbane 05:00 (+2 days)

From 1 May 2022, Qantas is scheduling a second daily Airbus A330 flight between Brisbane and Los Angeles. Both of these additional flights will depart in the morning, rather than the evening, giving customers a choice of flight times.

This is the planned schedule for Qantas’ second daily Brisbane-Los Angeles service, beginning from May:

• QF55 Brisbane 10:00 – Los Angeles 06:30
• QF56 Los Angeles 10:20 – Brisbane 17:40 (+1 day)

An unusual trans-Pacific schedule

This is a very efficient schedule for Qantas as it minimises the amount of time its planes spend on the ground in Los Angeles. Plus, while the airline would need to allocate two aircraft to a single daily Brisbane-Los Angeles flight, it only needs one extra aircraft (three in total) to add a second daily flight. So, this scheduling is great for aircraft utilisation.

The timing of QF56, which departs Los Angeles in the morning, could also be good for some passengers. If you have trouble sleeping on planes or struggle with jetlag, the daytime flight and early evening arrival into Brisbane could be more pleasant than a long overnight flight arriving at 5am.

But the morning departure from Los Angeles is traditionally less popular with business travellers, who would lose a day of work compared to taking an overnight flight. The early departure time from LA also somewhat limits the available connections.

Perhaps that’s why every other flight from continental USA to Australia departs late in the evening and flies overnight, arriving early in the morning two days later.

This isn’t the first time an airline has offered a morning departure from Los Angeles to Brisbane. Virgin Australia used to run a daytime flight on this route once per week on Saturdays. It did this for aircraft utilisation reasons, but the morning departure was traditionally less popular with travellers. The upshot was that it was sometimes easier to find reward availability or get an upgrade on that flight.

Classic Flight Reward availability

The good news for Qantas Frequent Flyer members is that there are some Business Class reward seats available on the new Los Angeles-Brisbane services. We’ve found Classic Flight Reward seats on several dates on the Qantas website.

Further changes possible

It remains to be seen whether this ambitious new Brisbane-Los Angeles schedule sticks. After all, the relaunch of Qantas flights on this route (and many others) has already been pushed back multiple times.

If there’s currently insufficient demand for Qantas to justify running even a few flights per week from Brisbane to the USA, it’s hard to see how the airline will be able to sustain double-daily flights just four months from now.

Prior to COVID-19, four airlines offered direct flights from Brisbane to North America. Qantas flew to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and had even planned to launch Brisbane-Chicago in April 2020. Virgin Australia also flew from Brisbane to Los Angeles, Air Canada flew to Vancouver, and Hawaiian Airlines offered services from Brisbane to Honolulu.

So far, none of these flights have resumed yet. In fact, Virgin Australia no longer has any long-haul aircraft, Air Canada isn’t even scheduling the resumption of its Brisbane-Vancouver flights yet, and Hawaiian Airlines recently said they would not return to Brisbane.

“While we certainly like flying to Brisbane, enjoy that, we were at the point where we were ready to move on. We don’t think the conditions in the short term are going to make sense for us,” Hawaiian Airlines Senior Vice President of Revenue Management and Network Planning Brent Overbeek said last week.

On one hand, this demonstrates a lack of confidence among international airlines in operating to Brisbane Airport. On the other hand, perhaps this presents an opportunity for Qantas to fill the sudden gap in the market. Their two daily Brisbane-Los Angeles flights could do well – if for no other reason – due to the lack of competition.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.