Originally Posted by
aerostatic
I would suggest the EK alliance was more about protecting the down side. With the proliferation of ME and asian carriers offering one stop services to Europe something had to be done. From that point of view I'd say it's been pretty successful. The direct flights from Perth should be a bit of a game changer for the airline.
I would agree with that. It was an attempt in some ways to counter the increasing dominance of the ME carriers by leveraging off them - the old saying... "better to have them in the tent p-ssing out, rather than outside the tent p-ssing in".
The plan has always been to use the 787 to do things like PER-LHR and to use them in Europe as well, flying possibly between DXB and CDG, FRA, IST or other centres. To me, with a one-stop to LHR it opens up the possibility of flying to DXB but not on to LHR, but other European centres. People need to remember that while Qantas has pulled out of FCO, CDG, FRA, etc. so have all the older Euro carriers pulled out of Australia. It works for EK and SQ and EY, etc. because they can hub and spoke over a city closer to Europe. Qantas can't fly smaller aircraft around Europe fed from 747s or A380s at a hub because they don't have the traffic rights. It is why I think any 'shuttle' into Europe with a 787 will start its journey as a lower density flight to DXB from somewhere else (MEL or SYD) which will then link with QF1 or QF9 passing through.
Qantas may not fly to all those European cities but it didn't fly to DFW and JFK 20 years ago either. It doesn't fly to a lot of places in the Pacific anymore either because it used to have to stop on the way to get to the US West Coast.