So, here is some interesting news.  According to the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), QANTAS is finding its 4 times a week flights to the DFW area using a 747-400ER as both successful and profitable.  The airline began the flights just 3 months ago and is already seeing load factors in the 90% range (with about 80% of that load being leisure and 20% corporate/business.)

There have been a few diversions to South Pacific locations for refueling due to adverse headwinds but none recently.  There have also been a few complaints about luggage being delayed due to load limitations.  Both because the route is on the outer limits of the range offered by the 747-400ER. 

If the success is as good as claimed by Qantas NSW regional general manager Peter Collins says it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if QANTAS either changed the service to an A380 in the future or if it added 6 or 7 times a week frequencies.  QANTAS has already said that when its 787s become available, they’ll likely service the route with multiple daily frequencies. 

QANTAS has both 787-8 and 787-9 aircraft on order but I would expect that the aircraft they’ll want to use is the 787-9 (provided the range promised is delivered) and that means a long time from now.  In the meantime, the A380 can offer as much range with greater capacity as the 747-400ER for this flight when it can operate its aircraft with the uprated Rolls Royce Trent engines at full thrust again. 

In any case, it’s good to see QANTAS succeed with this route and I look forward to seeing it developed even more as time goes by.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax