Malaysia Airlines adds third daily Sydney-KL flight

This is during a DST period, so I'd say the peak would be a little later, but I haven't the slightest clue why they'd use a 772.

QF has probably done the maths and it's not suprising given that Malaysia/KUL is mainly of a leisure market with lower yield as compared to SIN or HKG which are larger buisness markets with more demand for premium travel. WIth the lower cost base of MH, they could make a profit from a lower yielding flight but QF may incur a loss if it chooses to fly on this route. Maybe a JQ flight to KL would work better than a mainline QF flight.

JQ used to fly from SYD to KUL 3 times weekly back in 2007-2008. I flew them. JQ would not sustain as well as flying to DPS or HKT since there are no onward connections from KUL from Australia.

Sad that QF doesn't want to to at least do codeshare to KUL with MH and onward connections to North Asia. I would like to earn full QF points rather than mere 0.25 per mile flying to KUL.

Not sure the details of the discussion about setting up the premium airline back then but it's time for both parties to put it behind them and start fresh between them two.

It stems from the fact that the original motive of sponsoring MH was to forster a closer partnership and to set up an Asian premium airline. Since the talks with MH collapsed and the subsequent formation of the new Qantas-Emirates partnership, the relationship between Qantas and MH has turned rather sour and antagonistic. Ironically MH is now a Oneworld member, and Qantas remains unwilling to warm up to MH or the prospect of flying its own metal to KL (not even to code-share with MH on flights between KL and any of the 5 capital cities in Australia), but rather to codeshare with EK on its single daily KL-MEL flight. By shunning away from MH, Qantas is potentially losing out on much of the permium Asia-Australia traffic as its current intra-Asia connection in Singapore using JetstarAsia is simply not appealing to premium travellers in the broader Southeast Asia. In my opinion, KL is a logically a viable destination for Qantas when operated in close partnership with MH, considering Qantas can benefit from the feeding traffic from MH's extensive network in Asia, including markets such as China and India. However, the odds of having Qantas flights to KL is further dampened by the addition of flights offered by MH, as the market would most likely need some time to absorb the increased capacity. 

At the very least, it should be worthwhile sending a Jetstar widebody to KUL. Sure it doesn't have the same level of business traffic - HKG and SIN still beat the pants off KUL for that - but there is a lot of leisure travel both ways.

But who knows, maybe MH is the culprit, preferring to follow the CX/SQ model and attempt to conquer the Asia-Australia international market from its hub entirely on its own, allowing it to reap the full reward rather than sharing it with QF.

No doubt the Malaysia-Australia market has a large leisure traffic, lower cost base AirAsiaX is already offering more than 13,000 one-way weekly seats (soon to increase to 20k). Considering Jetstar's other wide-body operations to Singapore and Bangkok both experienced reduced capacity (used to be daily), it may well be a sign that Jetstar is struggling with its long-haul operations to Asia. 

CX and SQ have certainly been reluctant to collaborate, particularly during the peak of their dominance in the kangaroo route. Partnerships are formed in the recent years, most notably VA-SQ and BA-CX. Alhough the entrance of Qantas would dilute MH's share of Australia-Asia traffic, MH will stand to benefit from an increased connecting traffic through its hub with codeshare agreements. Like Virgin Australia's virtual Asian network with SQ, Qantas should reconsider its Asian strategy to offer seamless connections in collaboration with MH.  

Edy4eva: point taken, but I think most people don't take it so literally, and there's always room for a bit of colour in writing. :)

I remember CJ in The West Wing talking about Air Force One being wheels-up and she definitely meant departure time. So CJ must be right!