To me it makes no sense to operate three diferent SYD-LHR flights with a choice of refulling in Singapore, Bangkok or Hong Kong.
Arguably, giving the passengers a choice of HKG or SIN could be a source of competitive advantage. I agree that BKK was a goner - there was no feed at BKK (other than for those willing to fly JQ BKK-MEL).
I appreciate what you're saying about the stopovers, but funnelling the BNE and PER pax via HKG would allow more space on the A380s for QantAsia pax. It doesn't add up that Qantas wants to concurrently increase the passengers flying to LHR (they've said that they want to carry QantAsia passengers to Europe) while reducing the capacity to LHR.
If you want to carry local traffic between the city of Hong Kong and London, perhaps a departure at 0735 does not help - it is a long journey from the city to the airport at that time of day with a very early check in time. CX has two day light flights to London, but they leave later in the morning.
Thanks for the back-story. NZ was always going to be the most vulnerable carrier on this route, despite its smaller aircraft, because it lacks feed at either end.
Is traffic between Asia and London a major source of revenue for the Qantas LHR flights? Perhaps because the flight is only fed by Melbourne and Sydney (both of which have direct A380 services to LHR) they were filling up the aircraft with low yield HKG-LHR traffic willing to travel early. Do the A380s carrying much SIN-LHR local traffic?
Looking at the return
QF30 from LHR arrives at HKG at 1720
QF128 to SYD departs HKG at 2055
QF68 to PER departs HKG at 2325
QF98 to BNE departs HKG at 2315
You're right, the connections to LHR are great. However, the connections in the Australia bound direction towards PER and BNE are poor. The punters have better options than sitting around HKG for six hours (eg 3.5 hours via QF at SIN, undoubtedly other competitors have even better options) which is probably why the flight failed to attract feed from these cities. Feed from MEL and SYD is a moot point as they have the A380 factor.
QF29, if given the same on-board product as the SIN-LHR flights, and timed to connect in both directions, could have been a real winner for BNE-LHR and PER-LHR pax. The newer product probably would have skimmed some traffic off BA and NZ on the route, too.