How about some good news?
QANTAS is going to ramp up its flights between Dallas / Fort Worth and Australia from 4X weekly to 6X weekly and then daily. The move to 6 times a week comes in January and QANTAS will go daily in July of 2012.
Why? Because the flight works and work well for a variety of people. The flight duration from DFW to Brisbane is essentially the same as it is from the West Coast (is there much of a difference in an hour more duration when we’re talking about 15+ hour flights?) and it affords a connection in a city that is uncrowded vs many West Coast cities.
The real deal here is feed. American Airlines must be feeding a ton of traffic to QANTAS and vice-versa. This is one benefit in the Oneworld alliance that does work.
It’s also why I’m skeptical of Emirates doing very well in DFW. Emirates has no relationship with any airline in the DFW area. Furthermore, DFW airport is exceptionally dominated by American Airlines. Without a codeshare and/or interline agreement with AA, I just don’t see much feed going over to Emirates.
As for Origin and Destination traffic between DFW and Dubai . . . forget about it. As for connections to the Middle East, India and Africa, let’s take a look.
Dallas isn’t an oil city. That’s Houston. Dallas is banking and real estate and software. There are ties to India but you can get there just as conveniently or more so via the airlines already giving you frequent flier miles. I think the lure of frequent flier miles is silly but I won’t argue against the fact that they are a major driver for most fliers. Africa? Again, there just aren’t many ties from Dallas to that part of the world.
Now, as for air cargo traffic, I see that this might work. But at the end of the day, you still have to fill those 777s with passengers to succeed.
It will be fun seeing their aircraft here just as it is seeing QANTAS 747s here. And if the 747 is doing *that* well between DFW and Australia, it’s quite possible we’ll see an argument made for some of those flights to be served with an Airbus A380 (which should be able to make the hop to Australia east to west without Brisbane in the equation.)
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