Qantas Jumbos fly domestic, Virgin quits Dubai and more

Qantas Jumbos to fly domestic
Qantas is putting near-retirement Jumbos on its Sydney-Perth route to help boost its pilot-training requirements. At the same time, a daily Airbus A330 service will fly the Perth-Singapore route from July 22, replacing two B737-800s flights.

Qantas has hired more than 600 pilots in Australia over the past 12 months and the arrival of new Boeing 787-9s from last October has led to some 650 pilots being trained to fly the Dreamliner or retrained for Qantas’s other fleet types.

The last of the 747-400s will be retired from the international fleet in 2020, the year of the airline’s centennial. Chief executive Alan Joyce says the airline will have had to “spend a lot of money on reconfiguring them” to reach the same standard of cabin amenities as the new 787-9s.

“So we made the choice of going for brand new aircraft and the business case works with even lower fuel [prices] than it is today," he says, "And certainly if fuel is higher, it really, really works. That made the business case even stronger and that’s why we made the decision.”

Qantas among top on-time airlines
Qantas Airways and Hong Kong Airlines have each earned five stars for punctuality in OAG’s On-time Performance (OTP) Star Ratings for the 12 months to May. Five-star newcomers included Korean T’Way Air and Japan’s Fuji Dream Airlines. Jetstar Asia, Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Singapore Airlines all earned four stars to rank among the world’s top 25 airlines for timeliness. Japanese airports delivered impressive annual OTP results, with 19 achieving five-star status, including the large hubs of Osaka International Itami (88.2%) and Tokyo International Haneda (86.0%).

United reshuffles Singapore flights
United Airlines will cancel its Los Angeles-Singapore route while simultaneously adding another San Francisco-Singapore flight. The final flight from Los Angeles will operate on October 27, the one-year anniversary of the inaugural flight. The new service from San Francisco will complement the other in terms of schedule, departing at 10am instead of 10pm and arriving back at 8.55pm rather than 8.35am. Singapore Airlines has already announced its intention to operate a Singapore-Los Angeles service by early next year. 

Virgin Atlantic to quit Dubai
After 12 years, Virgin Atlantic is giving up on the London Heathrow-Dubai route, saying it is “no longer economically viable.” The flights will cease on March 31 next year. It is the second airline this year to ditch flights between the UK and Dubai. Royal Brunei Airlines announced last month it would launch non-stop Brunei-London flights later this year.

Emirates now has up to 10 daily flights to the London area, with nearly 5000 seats offered each day each way. British Airways also operates more than one flight a day. The absence of competing airlines from Dubai is unlikely to affect its status as the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passengers. Year-to-date, traffic reached 30.35 million passengers, up 0.8% on the previous year. In 2017, total traffic rose 5.5%.

Virgin Australia boosts Hong Kong service
Virgin Australia is restoring daily flights to its Melbourne-Hong Kong route from October 28 with the added appeal of a late morning departure and a late afternoon arrival. It will replace a five days a week service that left around midnight. The return leg of the new service will leave Hong Kong at 7.50pm for an 8.30am arrival in Melbourne the following day. This week, the airline launched its inaugural Sydney-Hong Kong daily service. This also operates with a morning departure from Sydney and overnight from Hong Kong.

A whale of a tale
It may not be used for business travel but Airbus is making a splash with the design for the latest version of its Beluga transporter, pictured. The all-new BelugaXL (Airbus A330-700L) was unveiled in Toulouse, France, earlier this week with a livery that includes a whale-style nose cone, sparkling blue eyes and a smiling mouth. The design was chosen by Airbus staff after a poll in which 20,000 employees were given six options and asked to choose their favourite. With 40% of the vote, it was the clear winner.

Route news of the week
Air New Zealand will add a sixth weekly flight on its Auckland-Buenos Aires Ezeiza service from December 3. The route is now operated by Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. China Southern will use a B787-9 Dreamliner on one of its two daily flights on the Guangzhou-Auckland route from October 28. Austrian Airlines will end its four-times-weekly Vienna-Shiraz-Esfahan-Vienna on September 15 as Iran faces further economic sanctions over its nuclear arms programme.

All content copyright NBR. Do not reproduce in any form without permission, even if you have a paid subscription.