No room for any delay. I think this operation will last maximum 6 months and added services will be put on Hong Kong and/or Singapore.
As we quietly postulated on another thread, wait until a Northern winter sees the aircraft supposedly entering a hold at LAM, BNN due a TEMPO.
The aircraft will not be able to, and already have diverted to who knows where as the crew hit the hard limit of 20 hours. Just how Qantas positions a crew and WHEN is a very interesting permutation.
Unfortunately for Qantas, CASA didn't grant a further exemption...
For the slot to be maintained Qantas will slide it to a token 'three times a week' sort of service, before quietly dropping it all together with the QF9 routing through Singapore.
Alan's random walk complete, from 400 JQ aircraft by 2020, Red Q, 'terminal declines and transformations', a game changing hub in DXB, only to abandon it five years later and head back through Singapore. Pure genius.
Oh and they still need a new fleet