717 Back to Tasmania

[HOBAY 3]

Looks like from 31 March that NJS is bringing back the 717 for a swansong on their Tasmania playground of HBA-MEL, HBA-SYD, LST-MEL and LST-SYD, where they have plied many a path over three decades for VQ, JQ, and various QantasLink incarnations.

On HBA-MEL, they replace the existing 73H one for one (four daily), on LST-MEL they replace two daily of the four DH3 (leaving two daily DH3), on LST-SYD they replace the single daily E90 that had been scheduled to take-over from 31 March (but won't just yet, evidently), and on HBA-SYD they replace the three daily 73H on just two of those services per week.

Still no 223 schedules showing for CBR-MEL, but four per day 717 remain — must need a few more training runs to iron-out the last bugs in the 223!

[morno]

Cool bananas

[Stationair8]

They still have a crew base in Hobart?

[Lapon]

I didn't think they had ever left Hobart, other than occasionally having 737s operate some of the sectors on any given day from time to time.

[HOBAY 3]

They still have a crew base in Hobart?
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Correct: One QF mainline 73H and one NJS 717 overnight; but from 31 March, instead of the 73H flying first-wave to MEL and the 717 to SYD, the 73H flys to SYD and the 717 to MEL.



I didn't think they had ever left Hobart, other than occasionally having 737s operate some of the sectors on any given day from time to time.

Correct: The 717 and 73H have been sharing the HBA-SYD sectors, whereas the 73H exclusively has been flying all HBA-MEL sectors. But the plan (as indicated by the available flights) had been for the remaining 717 HBA-SYD to be replaced entirely by 73H from 31 March, leaving no 717 flying to HBA. Instead, the 717 appears to stay; it replaces all 73H flying on HBA-MEL, and just two per week 717 will remain on HBA-SYD, the other 17 per week as 73H.

Turns out QF (excluding JQ) has scheduled more seats per week on HBA-SYD than on HBA-MEL, unless some new 223 runs appear ...

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