QF A380 ops changes

[Rowan McKeever]

Qantas announced this afternoon QF7/8 will switch to A380 nonstop SYD-DFW-SYD, eliminating the BNE stop on QF8, from 29 September. Frequency reduces to 6 per week with the loss of the Tuesday service, but capacity up approx. 10%.

Facilitating this is the long-awaited retiming of LHR services. QF9 now departs MEL late evening for lunchtime arrival into LHR, with QF10 leaving LHR at lunchtime for an early evening arrival into MEL. From the schedules the flying pattern will be QF1-QF10-QF9-QF2.

http://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-customers-to-experience-world-class-a380-services-to-dallasfort-worth

[Stuart Trevena]

Hi All,

Rowan, Considering QF10 used to arrive YMML around 4.30am EDST for memory, then went on to QF93 to LA, is Qantas now going to ferry down a A380 Ex Sydney for the QF93 service or will the A380 off QF10 stay overnight, then depart as QF93?

Stuart

[Rowan McKeever]

QF94 will turn as QF93, QF10 will turn as QF9 is my take on it Stuart, although presumably they'll need to adjust the schedules for 93/94. Otherwise they're just shifting the long stays from LHR to MEL which wouldn't free the aircraft up for DFW.

[Stuart Trevena]

Hi All,

This was taken from "The Qantas Source" Website

QANTAS today announced its revised schedule on London Heathrow services which will reduce the number of aircraft required for London services from six to five aircraft. The new schedule, from July 20th, retimes the Melbourne services and means aircraft will fly a six day W pattern originating in Sydney. The aircraft schedule will be follows:

QF1 Sydney 1550 – Dubai 0035+1
QF1 Dubai 0215 – London Heathrow 0645

QF10 London Heathrow 1330 – Dubai 2325
QF10 Dubai 0115+1 – Melbourne 2055

QF9 Melbourne 2255 – Dubai 0705+1
QF9 Dubai 0905 – London Heathrow 1340

QF2 London Heathrow 2125 – Dubai 0720+1
QF2 Dubai 0920 – Sydney 0510+1.

One significant effect of the rescheduling is that the late Melbourne arrival of QF10 will eliminate all onward connections from Melbourne for that service, meaning all passengers wishing to connect to anywhere other than Sydney and Melbourne yet still fly on QANTAS aircraft will be forced to use the QF2 Sydney service.

So Rowan, you are Right. Bugger for anyone wanting a connection in Melb onwards.

Stuart

[Stefan Perkas]

Evening all,

Here is the confirmation of the changes...

QANTAS from 20JUL14 is changing operational schedules on Melbourne – Dubai – London Heathrow service. From Melbourne, departure time will be pushed back by 3 hours, while London departure shifts from night-time to daytime. Arrival into Melbourne will switch from morning hours to evening hours as a result.

QF009 MEL2255 – 0705+1DXB0910+1 – 1340+1LHR 388 D
QF010 LHR1330 – 2325DXB0135+1 – 2055+1MEL 388 D

From 01NOV14, Day 6 departure from LHR remains at night-time with following schedule:
QF010 LHR2215 – 0910+1DXB1055+1 – 0735+2MEL 388 6

http://airlineroute.net/2014/05/09/qf-mellhr-jul14/

[Andrew RC]

Has anybody been able to work out the required changes on SYD-HKG A380 ops, which are currently A380 Thurs-Mon and 744 Tues-Wed?

From what I can gather the LHR and maintenance rescheduling will free up the equivalent of 1x A380 to allow 3 times a week ops to DFW. Given DFW will be 6 days a week, will that require cutting back SYD-HKG to only 1 or 2 days a week with A380 service?

I'm holding off booking a HKG flight until QF announce proposed "change to the SYD-HKG 744/A380 mix".

[Rowan McKeever]

Non-daylight savings times for the new QF7/8:

QF7 SYD1310-1345DFW x2
QF8 DFW2215-0605(+2)SYD x2

Still no sign of the revised QF93/94 timings to accommodate new QF9/10...

[Brad Myer]

So we are just waiting on the new QF93/94 times, and the new QF127/128 aircraft types.

Any ideas?

[Alex T]

According to some "rumours" floating around the net, QF127/128's A380 services will be replaced by A330's...

[Michael Cleary]

QF will lose out to Cathay if they downgrade to the 330 - that would mean no PE, which Cathay have, not to mention the drop in capacity.

[Andrew RC]

UPDATE - I spoke to QF earlier today and enquired about the A380 changes as I noticed when trying to make a booking SYD-HKG that there was no First availability from early Oct onwards.

The phone agent was very helpful and suspected what I did; that A380 will no longer be going to HKG, but no announcement yet. She rang the scheduling analysts to check, and after a long hold said: "the scheduling analysts have not formally announced any changes yet, but did say that First Class will no longer be offered on the SYD-HKG sector"...... Read into that what you want, but fairly clear that it will soon be announced as A330 or B747.

Not sure what the yields were for QF on the A380, but was also on the same sector 6 months ago paying full fare in First, and the cabin was full - unless they have a lot of upgrades using points on the route?

Have booked on SQ via SIN instead (in A380 First Suites which are arguably better anyway), and saved about $1,300 one way.......

[Alex T]

Looks like the reconfigured 747's are set to operate the QF127/128 services and the A380's being operated on a seasonal demand basis...

http://www.ausbt.com.au/qantas-to-stop-selling-first-class-to-hong-kong?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=flipper&utm_campaign=home-flipper

[Erik H. Bakke]

Could Qantas have a different A380 configuration in the works, perhaps?

[Andrew RC]

Have already received my call from Qantas advising downgrade from First (mid-Oct flight SYD-HKG), and offering to change to business with differential refunded, or full refund without penalty. Opted for a full refund, and gave feedback that in anticipation of their call I had already rebooked with SQ with a much cheaper first class fare than I had paid via QF in the first instance.

They are also looking into a possible refund for airport hotel I had booked via QF website as I was going to be staying the night before the flight (not needed now with change to SQ). The airport hotel was a non-refundable pre-paid when I booked, so very reasonable if they give consideration for that – FF status might help.

An inconvenience for me to change things around but not a huge issue; and I hope other first class pax don’t give the QF staff a hard time for what is an unenviable task of making those calls for existing bookings. I’m taking a bigger picture view that the A380 to DFW is a good outcome, and still other options to Asia.

Also, somebody posted on another forum about the EK 77W first class option SYD-BKK, and how it doesn’t synch in with viable layover timings to the BKK-HKG A380 service. Just bear in mind that on their B77W first cabins (8 seats), EK only allocate half of those (4) to the QF codeshare, so may be limited seats. Although I flew the inbound CHC-SYD tag of that B77W flight a few weeks ago and was the only one in the first cabin. Getting people onto QF metal in business is understandably their preferred fix though.

[Alex T]

QF127/128's A380 services confirmed to be axed -
http://www.ausbt.com.au/qantas-axes-airbus-a380s-from-sydney-hong-kong?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=flipper&utm_campaign=home-flipper

[Rowan McKeever]

Still no sign of the timing adjustments for QF93/94, still showing 0820 arrival and 0910 departure at MEL for a series of random (and some not-so-random) weeks through to this time next year...???

[Andrew M]

50 min turnaround for an A380......... :eek:

[Jason H]

Would QF swap aircraft in DXB? Such that QF9 from MEL would then depart as QF2 to SYD and QF1 from SYD then depart as QF10 to MEL. If you have a look it seems to work with the DXB-LHR rotation too

[Rowan McKeever]

There's not much reason why they couldn't I guess. The aircraft are cleaned etc and crews changed. The only thing I can think of is that the ULDs for through pax would have to be offloaded and reloaded which isn't overly efficient.

[David C]

What about brake temps ?
Q

[Rowan McKeever]

QF1 SYD-DXB to QF10 DXB-MEL doesn't work as 10 departs before 1 arrives.

QF9 MEL-DXB to QF2 DXB-SYD wouldn't have a brake temp issue as the turn would actually be 10 minutes longer, however 10 minutes shorter for the resulting (albeit over shorter sectors) turn on QF2 LHR-DXB to QF9 DXB-LHR.

[Jason H]

There is 60minutes between 1 arriving from SYD and 10 departing to MEL. I guess the loading and unloading of bags would probably make the swap impractical

[Ben W]

Anyone know what the new opps for QF93/94 look like when these changes go into place?

[Rowan McKeever]

From what I can work out it must be no later than 21 July that the change takes place (assuming QF10 departing 20 July is the first retimed LHR departure). As of yesterday the online schedule hadn't been updated so who knows what 93/94 look like!?

[Brad Myer]

Maybe they haven't realized??

With all the other schedule changes recently you would think the update to QF93/94 would be an easy one...

[JamesL]

QF 093 06APR04OCT 1234567 484388 0910 LAXLAX J
QF 093 30MAR05APR 1234567 484388 1010 LAXLAX J
QF 093 05OCT25OCT 1234567 484388 1010 LAXLAX J
QF 094 06APR04OCT 1234567 484388 LAXLAX0820 J
QF 094 30MAR05APR 1234567 484388 LAXLAX0920 J
QF 094 05OCT25OCT 1234567 484388 LAXLAX0920 J

From Co-Ord

[Brad Myer]

Looks like the new QF93/94 times are slowly being loaded…

Other changes I can see is A330s replace B763s on the SYD-HNL-SYD route from September.

A mix of A333 and A332 will operate SIN and CGK services from September 2014.

[Rowan McKeever]

What're the new timings Brad?

[Rowan McKeever]

Found it, finally got my confuser to load timetable properly! Pretty much as expected. QF107/108 (JFK leg) also changed slightly as a result.

[Stefan Perkas]

Evening all,

QANTAS from 21NOV14 to 13FEB15 is boosting operations to Chile, with the introduction of 4th weekly operation on Sydney – Santiago de Chile service. The new flight, subject to Government Approval, operates on Fridays.

QF027 SYD1250 – 1125SCL 744 x247
QF028 SCL1335 – 1735+1SYD 744 x247

Info from: http://airlineroute.net/2014/06/23/qf-scl-w14/

QANTAS from 09DEC14 to 20JAN15 is adding 7th weekly service on Sydney – Dallas route, on board Airbus A380 aircraft. The additional flight will be operating on Tuesdays.

QF007 SYD1525 – 1345DFW 388 D
QF008 DFW2010 – 0605+2SYD 388 D

Info from: http://airlineroute.net/2014/06/23/qf-dfw-dec14/

[Ben W]

Got an email from Qantas about a booked flight change yesterday for travel I have in Dec.

QF 94/93

Leaves LAX 40 min earlier
Leaves MEL 20 min late

So looks like they will be turning the same plane around and flying it back to LAX and QF 9/10 will use the same plane as well.

I wonder if this will impact QF 108 from JFK? That's a tight transition at LAX now....

[Brad Myer]

The QF107/108 JKF flights have been slightly adjusted to allow connections with the new QF93/94 times.