Britannia back to Australia
 

Britannia Airways is making a return to Australia after a break of 4 years.

Flights will commence mid November 2005 and end in February 2006.
They will be operated using 767-300 Aircraft and have a premium cabin available. Charterer is Austravel, part of Thomson.

Prices start at £299 one way, £499 return, £999 return in Premium and go on sale today (09/01/05).
The routings are...

LGW-AUH-SIN-PER once a week
LGW-AUH-SIN-SYD once a week

These are direct routings with no stop overs available.

Details can be found in the forth coming Travel Trade gazette.

Balboy,

Any idea which day of the week (you seem to offer more info than the TTF article you mention, or that I could get out of Thomson!)?

Do they have to do this route with TWO tech stops - surely they could have used a different a/c, and got away with just one stop - especially to PER? Or, do non-business pax prefer having a chance to break their journey and stretch their legs?

Really sorry, I don't know the days of travel yet. The Austravel website have started advertising these flights but there seems to be a glitch in the system at the moment and is not giving any booking information.

We only have the 767 and do not plan to gey any longer range aircraft.

We did operate AUH-PER in the past, but have no information if this will be the case again.

The Austravel special offers page does say Perth or Sydney, so could well be the case again.

Britannia have tried in the past doing the Uk - Perth run with only one stop in Abu Dhabi,I seem to remember it was not a great success as the payload had to be restricted down to about 300 pax on the AUH-Perth sector due to the requirement to carry remote airport holding fuel into Perth and a third pilot.This made it economically unviable.

I believe that the "two stop" policy on both routes with transits through common airports will also enable a more efficient usage of the crews involved, thereby enabling a lower seat price. At least, that's the theory...

Tightslot,

That depends on how many rotations per week you have. If it's only once a week then it works out very crew inefficient, one of the reason why both BY and AIH stopped the AUS routes.

The last time BY and AIH tried this route the customers voted with their feet (and wallets). BA & QF offer the route for £500-£600 with only 1 stop and a route time of approx 22-24 hours. With 2 stops you are looking at getting on for 30 hours! Whilst premium cabins with extra legroom are available, the majority of the pax are going to be economy. It's gonna take 2 days for the body to recover from being that cramped. And bear in mind, pax complain about the lack of room on a 4 hour TFS! :ouch:

Thanks - agreed and understood: I may be wrong, but with two destinations, doesn't this mean two rotations a week, in which case the crew efficiency argument becomes more valid?

Also agreed on the comfort side of things, but I wonder if recovery time is significantly reduced from two days by travelling scheduled?

On balance, it strkes me as a good thing for the consumer that this route should be re-opened?

Two destinations may need twice weekly, dependent on loads. BY were doing double or triple drops through PER, SYD and AKL for a while. Although, having said that, twice weekly PER / SYD would still be a 18-21 day trip, depending on departure dates. With days off before and after you are looking at a crew being committed to a trip for nearly 4 weeks!

I wouldn't even consider using Britannia/Thomsonfly to go to Australia. Overlooking the no. of stops, the standard of seating is a joke; zero legroom and width not much better. I suspect the standard of IFE is pretty poor in relation to the scheduled carriers. Is the fare even competitive at £499? I've just done a quick search and found the following for a 2 week trip in November:

Emirates £644(using their nice new B777s and A340-500s..)
Cathay Pacific £655

Let's not forget Virgin's target of "full at the back at any price". The BY service may be going when demand is at its peak, but aren't the bargain hunters going to be more likely to travel with VS when the price is right?

I for one don't mind refuelling stops, but I want to be able to get around and look around - even in somewhere like ATL!

how exactly do you get from 1 stops =22hrs and 3 stops =30hrs - must be long stops

Indeed they were swedish . Stops used to be approx 3 hours IIRC, especially AUH to allow pax to avail themselves of the duty free facilities. Add on the additional route time for landing / take off phase and it soons adds up. A colleague of mine once travelled UK to AKL with BY via AUH, BTH and PER. 34 hours it took him. In economy. Worst part was he knew he had it all to do again in reverse 2 weeks later. :ugh:

Hello,

I believe Virgin's price is quite good. I booked my flight to Sydney via Hong Kong with Virgin and paid £614, im sure i could go with some other airline for a lower price, but my choice was more to try as a pax the A340-600.

Well i just had a month in SYD for £530 return thanks to Lauda/Austrian. Cant seem to match the same fare with anyone else to do the same trip again :{
Bloody good deal i thought considering its peak season out there!
Only 1 stop and a lovely 777 in cattle class i enjoyed myself!

EB;)

EasyBaby,

You mean one stop from VIE SYD? Add two more to get there from EDI though, or are you based in VIE?

Roll on Emirates at EDI!

yes the extra two flights to get to VIE was a little bit of a slog esp on the return journey. The return flight from LHR to VIE was included in the price. BMI for an extra £70 but including this i was still paying upto £200 less to fly with OS. I would defintely choose them again if the price was right.

EB;)