with regards to the emirates tie up, is it really beneficial for syd/mel travellers.

with regards to the emirates tie up, is it really beneficial for syd/mel travellers... according to gcmap your flying a long way out of your way now as opposed to singapore. why wouldnt they use their morning slots at LHR for a syd-hkk-lhr a380 daily for business travellers. syd-lhr goes right over hkg on the gc.

MEL-SIN-LHR = 10509 miles

MEL-DXB-LHR = 10651 miles

From Sydney it's about 300 miles different, or 400 compared to going via Hong Kong. 

What's that, an hour at max? Not really worth worrying about in my book, you could lose more time than that waiting to clear Heathrow customs....

The quickest travelling time is not necessarily the most profitable way to operate a two sector long haul flight.  It is about the through traffic revenue that can be generated combined with the revenue that is generated on each individual sector

Hong Kong is a very tough market for QF to use as a transit stop to Europe - they tried it but it did not make enough revenue.  The problem is HKG/LON is served 4 x daily with CX and 3 x with BA and 1 x VS 1 X NZ.  HKG/LON is a very lucrative city pair due to the high volume of premium traffic linking two key financial cities.  

The Australian business travel market is very pro QF however, in the HKG and LON markets it is really only BA CX and VS that corporates are really interested in flying, especially BA and CX, one because of multiple flight choices, two the deals both those airlines give corporations.

It means QF is always on the back foot and has to sell its seats at lower rates.  NZ does well with the route as they are a niche player and not really competing with BA and CX.  VS make their money on the LON/SYD route from the LON/HKG/LON journey, and almost treat HKG/SYD/HKG as a separate route

To a  lesser degree QF suffered the same problem on SIN/LHR/SIN - again two key financial cities and a very lucrative route.  Yes Australian business travellers by far prefer the QF flights - but the SIN and LON markets prefer the SQ and BA flights and that is where they make their money. BA and SQ fares LON/SIN/LON are only slightly cheaper than LON/AUS/LON.  QF has always been up against that as a lot of their traffic is AUS/EUROPE/AUS so they generate less revenue per seat

The tie up with EK should help to reduce these disadvantages and operating costs.  The new deal with EK will see QF operating 15% of the aircraft with the new deal 2 x LON services versus EKs 3 x SYD 3 x MEL and 2 x BNE 2 x PER 1 X ADL services.  Unless QF add their own flights from PER BNE ADL QF travellers are not going to experience much if any of their journey on a QF aircraft