Qantas Sydney to Hong Kong: why are both flights a morning departure?

Hi all, 

Scarcity of HKG slots, at a guess.

At most there is a 35min variation in the timetable (QF117)... Just be thankful its not all over the place like VA's MEL-HKG schedule. Different day, wildly different departures. HKG is incredibly constrained with slot times.

Probably not a large number of people want to arrive in HKG at 2am (early evening departure) or 6am (late evening departure).

I'd agree, I would much rather see variety of times in these flights. This is a big factor in my choosing CX when I fly to Hong Kong, because they have four daily flights out of Sydney and all at different times, I can put in a full day's work and fly overnight on CX138, or have an early start and catch CX110 to get into HKG at 3pm, or fly out later in the day.

They used to fly overnight from Melb QF a fair few years back.

You cannot have different flight times if there are no slots available... This is the chart from the HKG slot coordination office for the next few months.

Fly by CX - they have 4 flight spread through the day, last departure is 9:55pm arriving 5:15am and I definitely will favor this times, I only wish that it fly away even later, like 11pm or even midnight.