QF 25 to Tokyo: Why does QF 25 land at 6:20am in Tokyo, and depart Tokyo at 10:20pm the same day, having spent over 12 hours on the ground in Tokyo.

QF 25 to Tokyo:

Why does QF 25 land at 6:20am in Tokyo, and depart Tokyo at 10:20pm the same day, having spent over 12 hours on the ground in Tokyo. Couldn't Qantas better utilise the aircraft by having it depart Sydney and arrive in Tokyo on the same day, like it does with all its other Asian routes?

Possibly to offer a choice between its own evening departure and the morning departure offered by One World partner JAL?

Correct on the SYD-Tokyo leg, but on the Tokyo - SYD leg they both leave at night and arrive within minutes of each other.

I often wonder the same thing about a lot of Qantas' flights.

QF1/2 QF9/10 QF11/12 QF93/94 QF15/16 

I know the idea is that business passengers want to fly at night to maximise daylights hours but having A380s sitting on the ground in London and Los Angeles seems so wasteful. I am aware that at LAX they get serviced but still.

I would imagine that QF1/2 QF9/10 would be better off leaving Australia nearer Emirates' departures in the evening (9pm ish) to hit the onward EK connections into Europe and then a late morning arrival into Heathrow. Presumably the planes would be more full instead of all non-Heathrow QF passengers having to go on EK. 

Apart from servicing, connections are vital at LAX. One of the Sydney planes could do a morning departure from LAX, but not both... plus then you have SYD's curfew.

We will see what the QF9 timing changes bring.

With NRT, this is served by old 747's and increasing their utilisation probably brings little benefit. Once they are retired, the route may need retiming or may be better served by 2 x daily A330's which are turned-around

Connections are vital at LAX, but connections on AA ex-LAX remain quite good in the evenings, albeit to a lot of redeyes.

Evening departures and early morning arrivals would be attractive to business travellers from both ends. QF must have done the maths before deciding to compromise on aircraft utilisation in favour of business traffic, which would otherwise leak to their competitors.

Morning arrivals into Australia/USA are preferred for the reason of maximising connecting traffic. Morning arrivals allow the maximum opportunity for connecting flights to other cites or regional destinations. The same goes for evening departure from London and Los Angeles.  

I think they like to flight overnight to arrive early in the morning for two major reasons – business people prefer this way and arriving in the morning you have far more chances for connection.