QANTAS boss Alan Joyce believes the arrival of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners can help the airline slash domestic mainline costs by 10 percentage points and narrow the competitive gap with rival Virgin Australia.
The cost base of the mainline Qantas operations is 10-15 per cent higher than Virgin's, and Mr Joyce hopes he can reduce the differential to about 5 per cent.
The first 787 is due to land in Melbourne tomorrow and the decision to send the fleet of 14 aircraft to Jetstar will see Qantas receive the low-cost carrier's 11 Airbus A330-200s between now and late 2015. This will allow Qantas Domestic to retire ageing, fuel-guzzling Boeing 767s and simplify its domestic fleet to two types: the A330-200s and Boeing 737-800s. "And that means it has a clean fleet," Mr Joyce said. "Qantas mainline will only be operating A330-200s and 737-800s by 2015 when this is all done, and that gives us a huge cost reduction. We think our cost base will get down to below 5 per cent compared to where Virgin is and that's a big movement."
Gee, imagine how much lower their costs would've been if they'd sent the 787s to mainline instead of JQ!!!