Qantas Suspending Antartic Flights

[Stationair8]

On Flightaware site it mentions that QF will be suspending Antartic flights in December 2015.

[onehitwonder]

747 fleet retirement?

[ACMS]

Shrinking the international long haul fleet so I guess you'd be correct. Not enough spare capacity to run the flights.

[C441]

I'd be interested to see if Croydon Travel are looking for a new operator or if they are giving it away. Both Croydon and Qantas do very well out of these flights.

I believe there are 5 planned this upcoming season; a combination of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth departures.

Having flown a few of these trips I can highly recommend the day out. New Year trip is quite a party and almost continuous daylight despite arriving over the ice after 10:00pm and the scenery on the other trips -over the ice in the middle of the day- is usually stunning. The mountainous area around Cape Hallett is probably the best viewing but all the coastline west from there is unique and a few laps over Casey always has the pax intrigued about the isolation of the place.

[AEROMEDIC]

As far as I know, they confined these trips to around Christmas/New Year which limits the chance to make a dollar. Even then, the success of these flights was subject to weather for the pax to view the territory.
To me, it seems the flights were more an exercise in public relations and utilising unsold capacity than a money making venture.

Comments anyone?

[Qantas 787]

Given what they charge, surely everyone is making a lot of money from them. Even the middle seat in economy was more expensive than going to LA return in economy.

But yes, they don't have the spare aircraft now, unless they cancel commercial services, which is not going to happen given it is peak season.

However they even offered staff discounts the last couple of years so they wouldn't have been full.

[maggot]

how could they possibly operate these services now the true antarctic expert has 'retired'

[C441]

how could they possibly operate these services now the true antarctic expert has 'retired'

Thankfully the more senior of the most recent Captains to operate the Antarctic charters, managed to have him removed from the scene 4 years ago.

[wombat watcher]

As far as I know, they confined these trips to around Christmas/New Year which limits the chance to make a dollar. Even then, the success of these flights was subject to weather for the pax to view the territory.
To me, it seems the flights were more an exercise in public relations and utilising unsold capacity than a money making venture.

Comments anyone?

QF charters the aircraft and therefore makes a profit whether or not the flights have one pax or are chock-a-block
The season is based around the statistical best weather in the Antarctic ie Jan and Feb .
New Years Eve is also a ""romantic" favorite notwithstanding.
Christmas/ New Year has nothing to do with it.
It has nothing to do with public relations : a man with a vision thinks he can make a quid out of Antarctic flights and has always done so out of the program and puts his money where his mouth is; more power to him.

how could they possibly operate these services now the true antarctic expert has 'retired'

He might not have been your first choice to have a beer with but he was absolute quality when it came to operating the Antarctic flights..the charterer was delighted with him so if the customer is satisfied, is there much else to say?

[601]

I thought that it would be because all the ice had melted.