Originally Posted by
MickG0105
I did a bit of poking around on the various booking engines earlier and Rex's load factors are diabolically low.
For instance, Rex's fullest Sydney - Melbourne flight today was their 12.30pm, flight ZL105. That flew with a sub-40 percent load factor with just 63-odd seats filled out of 168 in the economy cabin.
The equivalent Qantas and Virgin flights, QF447 (12:30pm departure) and VA838 (12pm departure) flew with 96 percent and 82 percent economy loads respectively. When you look at the traditionally very high load factor flights like the 6.30pm departure Sydney - Melbourne, Qantas's QF483 is essentially full; when I looked this morning there was one unsold economy seat out of 162 and one out of 12 business class seats unsold.
Jetstar's 6.30pm, JQ523, is running at 100 percent.
Virgin's 6.30pm flight, VA878, was running at 83 percent (surprisingly with 7 out of 8 business class seats sold - some people like 2 minute noodles I guess).
The equivalent Rex flight, ZL153, had a grand total of 16 seats filled (and not one of the 8 business class seats sold) for a load factor of 9 percent.
Regardless of where Rex's cost base is you can not make money with those sorts of loads. And the tenting of their loads around midday suggests that they have not made any inroads to the corporate market.
I'd like to hear Sharpie's spin on this.
Virgin launched their new inflight catering yesterday. Business class passengers were generally receptive in a positive way with the offering. (Not hard considering the 2 minute "noodle gate" debacle). No complaints from the economy guests on the 3 sectors I operated yesterday. Time will tell. Poor cabin crew had zero training or knowledge of the product before yesterday, contrary to what miss Jayne stated.
Supposedly the reason there was no food the last 6 months was because there were in depth catering contract negotiations. Told today it was a last minute contract drawn up for 12 months with the previous contractor Gate Gourmet..........