British Airways Sydney Route.

[Neil Hogbin]

At the recent IAG Investor presentation the LHR/SYD route was highlighted as the "most improved" route in the BA network with traffic up 29% since the end of the JSA with QF. A combination of much better fuel burn with the 773 and improved yields and traffic appears to have had an almost transformational impact on the route for BA.

[Peter H.]

Thats good to read. Anyone who gives something a go deserves reward

[Laurent Sanhard]

Flew on BA15 from Singapore last month , beautiful new 777 300 and great BA service , personally I think Qantas made a mistake by giving up on Singapore for flights from Aus - Europe , even though they probably had to once they went into bed with Emirates , Good on BA for keeping the Kangaroo route going,

[Neil Hogbin]

According to BA's director of strategy, Lynne Embleton, at the IAG Capital Markets Day meeting in the middle of November, BA's LHR-SIN-SYD route showed a "circa £30 million profits improvement" in Q2 plus Q3 compared to the same period in 2012. This was following the termination of the BA/QF JSA.

[Radi K]

Is it the LHR-SYD route or the LHR-SIN v.v. thats bringing in the revenue ?? If it was LHR-SYD, it shouldn't really matter where you stop if you have a good product and people want to fly you. That would mean other airlines like QF/EK/EY/CX/VS/CZ etc - all with the one stop LHR service would be making money on the route too.

B77W is a money maker if you can fill it, thats for sure! QF should have had them long ago.

[Ash W]

Good on BA for keeping the Kangaroo route going,

So what exactly is the Kangaroo route? Noting of course that since the term was first used the route has changed so much it isn't funny.

For example in the 70's the Kangaroo route went through Bahrain which is about 250nm from Dubai, Qantas' current stop over point. Now don't think BA stop into Bahrain anymore, nor Calcutta, Darwin and a few other places en-route. So are they really flying the Kangaroo route, or is it maybe that both Qantas and BA are flying variations on the original route?

[Laurent Sanhard]

good point , as the route has changed a lot over the years , but the original route always went via Singapore , so I assume flights from UK - Sydney that stop in Singapore and vice versa still follow the original route , without all the extra stops and deviation via Cairo
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://images.smh.com.au/2012/08/22/3574638/2308qantas-kangaroo-route-620x349.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/business-travel/blogs/high-flyer/hopping-off-the-kangaroo-route-20120815-248w6.html&h=349&w=620&sz=83&tbnid=4zsX0W3pX53HnM:&tbnh=66&tbnw=117&zoom=1&usg=__SvtisSRYBFtTQJfdGt2OBSQ2p4Q=&docid=_m2vLakB6OARoM&sa=X&ei=TOtkUaCRMorFkQWF3YDgBg&ved=0CDIQ9QEwAA&dur=2875 [/URL]

[Ash W]

When both Qantas and BA flew through Bangkok it was still called the Kangaroo route, and clearly bypassed Singapore and indeed the flight number for the Qantas 'flagship' Kangaroo froute flight was QF1/2 and went via Bangkok for quite some time.

To many the definiation of the Kangaroo route is any route that takes passengers from Australia (and some say NZ) to/from the UK.

Now getting to the real topic at hand it would be interesting to know why the turnaround in profits for BA and their flight via SIN. Loads were always pretty healthy before, so maybe the increase in profits are through using a more efficient a/c, compared to the 747-400's that previously operated the route and the route via BKK (though do note they did use the 777-200 in the last year or two of the Qantas JSA). Then there of course is the issue that they now only operate the one route, whereas before two, so no doubt their yeilds are up, plus I also beleive they now operate using what are called mixed crew, which have a different wage and entitlement structure, including less rest periods. On top of that I beleive the JSA with Qantas included an element of profit sharing which they now won't have to do, though by the same token they wouldn't be getting from Qantas either. So really lots of reasons why the profitability of the route has gone up not all specifically related to flying through Singapore or running 777's.

[Laurent Sanhard]

Would be interesting to see load figures for QF1 /2. Since it joined with Emirates via Dubai. As opposed to when it operated QF 31 / 32