Mr Buchanan said the carrier’s Tasmanian operations remained strategically and operationally important, with its domestic seat capacity levels to remain unchanged for the upcoming schedule period between March-October 2009.
“Our domestic schedule for Tasmania will continue to support 77 weekly return services from 28 March 2009 between Hobart and Launceston direct to the Australian mainland,” Mr Buchanan said.
That's interseting, since their current schedule has only 74 weekly return services (28 x HBA-MEL, 14 x HBA-SYD, 21 x LST-MEL, 7 x LST-SYD and 4 x LST-BNE), so there must be 3 additional services coming from somewhere. The Tasmanian government and Hobart airport have been talking up possible HBA-OOL and HBA-NTL services, so maybe there is something here?
Don't hold your breath for the announcments of the schedule changes. JQ don't even have the correct schedules for March 29 (only 18 days away)! Apparantly there is an aircraft that departs MEL at 6:10, arrives in HBA 10 minutes later at 6:20, then turns around, departs HBA at 6:50, arriving in MEL over two hours later at 9:00! Their second MEL-HBA-MEL flight is also bogus, but the others have the correct timings. There are others anomalies in the network too, such as the ADL-DRW flight that is based in ADL despite the ADL base closing ages ago! Surely any reputible company would have their schedules in order less than 3 weeks in advance! If they know their schedules will change on May 1, then why not put the new schedules in the booking engine instead of stuffing everyone around who have to book on flights that won't exist???
As for the rumor about the Q400 HBA-SYD, my guess is that it won't happen. QF will not take their 737s off HBA-MEL, and these 737s operate a HBA-SYD service during the day as part of that rotation. So if a Q400 service was added, JQ would have to reduce, which they have just said that they are not doing. It would also require a Q400 base in HBA.