Suggestions for new Qantas hub flights?

16 replies

Dredgy

Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer

Member since 02 Apr 2017

Total posts 180

I have a weird pet peeve that I don't like to travel in the wrong direction when I'm flying. For example, my home base is Rockhampton (ROK) and I absolutely hate having to fly down to Brisbane and then fly back up to Dubai or Japan or wherever.

So my ideal (and slightly fantastical) setup would be Darwin as a sort of Australia-wide hub with ULR aircraft connecting directly to Asia and Europe and completely forgoing Dubai/Singapore hubs and get feed from all over Australia. So I could ideally fly ROK->DRW->CDG or BME->DRW->FRA. 

Will never happen, but I'd like it to.


Where's the passengers going to come from?


Well it'd be a hub - so same places as now but more streamlined.

 Let's take LHR for example. You want to fly Qantas from Cairns to London. You have to fly to Brisbane, then Perth, then to London. Horribly inefficient, so you fly another airline.


In another example, say Paris - there's enough demand to fly direct from SYD to CDG, but there is not enough demand from BNE, ADL,PER, CNS, OOL, maybe MEL etc to launch direct flights from those cities (assuming you can find an aircraft capable of doing it). So Darwin would act as a funneling point for pax from those cities (PER->DRW->CDG, ADL->DRW->CDG, CNS->DRW->CDG). 


That's how hubs work...

Darwin's also super geographically convenient, so much more forgiving on profits than Sydney if a plane can't be filled or there's an insane headwind. Not many places in Europe you can't reach from Darwin. Could also be used for East-West flights as a few here have expressed a wish for. GLT->DRW->PHE for instance would likely see a fair bit of use.  

Last editedby Dredgy at Sep 02, 2017, 06:21 PM.

Dredgy

Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer

Member since 02 Apr 2017

Total posts 180

Technically Qantas already does a direct route to Singapore from Darwin and Cairns.  Although they are run by Jetstar.  A nearly 5 hour flight on a crampt Jetstar plane does not appeal to me in the slightest though.

In economy, the difference between Qantas and Jetstar is pretty negligible. Actually not that much difference in business either compared to Qantas' 737 that they use PER->SIN.

Hi Guest, join in the discussion on Suggestions for new Qantas hub flights?

Attach Files