[QFi/Armchair] Retiming LAX flights.

[QFi/Armchair] Retiming LAX flights.

tl;dr: Retime LAX flights to leave Australia at night, arriving in LAX in the early evening; depart at night and arrive home in the morning. Connections should be good at both ends in both directions; downtime in foreign ports is cut down drastically. Win-win.

#longstory

So it's been announced that the MEL-DXB-LHR flight will be "retimed to improve aircraft utilisation". I was thinking about the LAX flights and how they too sit around all day. It is pretty silly when you think about it, having the four A380s sitting around in foreign ports doing nothing all bloody day.

Currently, the LAX flights are timed to leave Australia in the late morning and arrive in the early morning; they then sit around all bloody day, then they leave at night to arrive back in Australia in the morning.

I was thinking about how to reduce the layovers at the American end. To get a short layover (a few hours rather than the current sixteen), there are two broad possibilities - either leaving LAX in the mid-morning, or arriving in LAX in the early evening.

Leaving LAX in the mid-morning gives a late evening arrival in Australia (SYD/MEL/BNE). This is problematic at both ends - it leaves too early for domestic connections from their East Coast, and it arrives too late for domestic connections from our East Coast.

On the other hand, retaining the current night departure but shifting the ex-Australia departure to a late evening one offers a better set of connections at both ends. At the Australian end, we have lots of afternoon feed into the Golden Triangle, which can hang around till around nine-ish or ten-ish - this is a good departure slot, as it gives an LAX arrival of around 5 PM, which allows for a nice bank of onward connections on AA, including eastbound red-eyes. Leave at night, after a nice bank of AA arrivals, and arrive in Australia in the morning, connecting to morning peak banks out of SYD, MEL and BNE.

Thoughts?

Don't agree. The current arrivals at both ends arrive to allow for onward connections. It would also be the end of QF-JFK 107/108.

There is room for some changes, perhaps one of the SYD-LAX flights could either leave later or turn around in the LAX morning... but I'd leave the rest as is.

It should not be forgotten that QF does some maintenance on these birds at LAX.

I don't see why the loss of JFK is that bad. From what I understand, the flight cannot be sold to domestic customers anyway. It is far more efficient to codeshare these customers on American Airlines, and the rescheduling will allow better utilisation of valuable aircraft.

Sure, some line maintenance is done at LAX, but there's nothing stopping that line maintenance happening back here in SYD/MEL/BNE.

I agree with watson374, QF/JFK would not make any money so can forget that, the convienience factor for flights mentioned would be excellent, leaving 380's on groung all day is absolutley ridiculous.

I think that is a great idea to leave australia later in the day and JFK could still happen by using 2  A330 going back and forth. It would be only 2 small planes on the ground compared to the current 3 huge planes. 

They will probably enjoying having a red kangaroo at JFK as it is a bit of a status symbol.

As a lounge lizard I have noticed that most Qantas International flights leave quiet early with the exception of maybe DXB, TYO, HNL + NZ cities so enjoying a beer at 6pm instead of 8 am makes me feel a little better. 

 

Pretty much. It moves it away from the main daylight bank to Asia, too.

I would still drop JFK, though. No point running a loss-making route just to maintain prestige.