Qantas is bumping its LAX-NY connecting flight up to a daily service from 1 June 2011.
The Red Roo-liveried Airbus A330-200, which carries the same QF107/108 flight numbers as the primary feeder flights between Sydney and Los Angeles, currently runs just six flights per week from Los Angeles to New York's JFK airport, skipping Tuesdays.
But it's strictly for Qantas passengers connecting from Australia and New Zealand – no tickets are sold inside the US for this flight. Just as well, because Yanks may become quite jealous of the fitout on the A330: as one of Qantas' international variants of the A330 it includes 36 Skybeds in business class.
They're not the fully lie-flat horizontal beds – it's a lie-almost-flat recline which tends to be better for extreme relaxing than serious snoozing. But that's perfect for this last leg of your journey because it's a day flight, and you should be trying to adjust to your destination time zone.
So in this stretch-out mode and with 60 inches of legroom (almost twice that of the A330's economy cabin) it's one of the best ways to spend the almost six hours shuttling from coast to coast and is a cut above almost anything on the US domestic market.
So while Qantas has plenty of codeshare flights from Los Angeles to New York with American Airlines, if you're travelling in business class you may as well stick with Qantas all the way through.
Another reason is that Qantas runs this flight purely as a connection service for inbound LA flights from Sydney (QF107), Melbourne (QF93), Brisbane (QF15) and Auckland (QF25, which originates in Melbourne), so it's more likely to be held over at LAX to accommodate late-arriving aircraft whereas a US domestic service would happily take off before your late flight touched down.
The exception to this is if you're on QF11, which arrives too late into LAX for the QF107 connector.
David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
19 Jan 2011
Total posts 1
Good that there's a daily service, but that's about all that I agree with in this article.
As far as a 'cut above' anything else, UA and AA use internationally configured 3-class aircraft on their LAX/SFO - JFK routes. Both can provide an F service all the way from SYD or MEL to JFK whether connecting from QF or continuing with F on UA. DL provides an international configured aircraft connecing to the 777 service from SYD. All provide a competitive J service with QF while UA and AA provide an F service which QF does not have on the A330.
From a convenience perspective, why would anyone want to wait around rather than take the quickest connection to JFK and arrive a sensible time during the day rather than evening or even night. As you point out, the LAX-JFK service is likely to be delayed to accommodate late arriving QF planes. UA, AA and DL fly LAX-JFK all day, so if you're early there's a chance to grab an earlier connection.
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