QANTAS (the real QANTAS) ceases all flying to New Zealand.
 

Who would have thought - with todays announcement of the AKL LAX service being cancelled - QANTAS has ceased all operations into New Zealand. (Unless anyone can think of any odd ones - Queenstown maybe?)

A country so close and with such close ties - who would have thought no more services on our national carrier.

If you are making the distinction between 'Mainline' Qantas and Jetconect then your statement is not correct.

The A330 service QF25/26 MEL-AKL-MEL is being replaced by a 'Mainline' 737-800.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all happy about the continual shrinking of this once great airline but the particular change you refer to is not entirely correct.

ps. And I think 'Mainline' still do the Queenstown services as you suggested.

from an f/a perspective it is confusing. the AKL crew are not endorsed for 737. now with the withdrawal of the 747 from auckland/sydney if scheduling want to utilize them the cabin crew will have to be paxed to and from NZ to OZ. if u think this is not a problem consider that there are 500 hosties over there. that would be a minimum of 200 seats one way to get them to sydney each week.
then they have to get them back to NZ at the end of a trip

Qf25/26
 

Qf25/26 is not an A330. Think you might find it's operated via jet connect 800.

QANTAS today (16FEB12) announced latest restructure to its International network, which sees following changes in effect from May and June 2012:

eff 06MAY12
Auckland – Los Angeles Daily A330-200 Service CANCELLED. Air New Zealand will be the sole operator on this sector
Los Angeles – New York JFK Daily service to be operated by Boeing 747-400 once again, replacing A330-200. According to OAG, QF replaced 747 with A330 on this sector since 05JUL10
Singapore – Mumbai 3 weekly A330-300 Service CANCELLED

eff 10JUN12
Sydney – Bangkok Daily 747-400 service to be replaced by Airbus A330
Sydney – Tokyo Narita Existing 6 weekly 747-400 and 1 weekly A330-200 service will become Daily 747-400 operation

indamiddle,

I think you'll find that there are far fewer Kiwi crew than you suggest.

"Management" are reviewing how the Kiwi base is "positioned" within the group with suggestions that there are opportunities elsewhere for them in MEL or LHR according to Tarranto's latest double speak.


Make of that, what you will.........

The cancellation of the AKL-LAX service shows what a failure Boston Consulting Group are:- They did the research and convinced management that they would make more money utilising the A330 on the LAX-JFK sector but to make the aircraft available, an A332 had to operate the AKL-LAx-AKL services - replacing a 412 seat B744. This was giving Air NZ a boost because of the significant reduction in seats as well as a significantly longer flight time for the slower A332 which had to fly a longer route to stay within ETOPS distance of airports enroute. Now that they have made the route unprofitable they are pulling out totally thus gifting more traffic to Air NZ.

Can Qantas seek compensation from BCG for their poorly thought out research?

standard unit,
any idea how many crew based in NZ?
as an aussie company kiwi crew need aussie or euro passport to work the contract in LHR. that will limit numbers. MEL base just transferred bucket load of shorthaulers to 380. 747 only flies to HKG. too many f/a's in MEL already. with 2 extra 747 getting the chop that will be over 200 extra crew in l/h, mainly sydney. maybe the vr going at the moment will absorb some of these.
also that of the 500 staff reduction 40 are pilots jobs that will go. have, will they offer a package(VR)?

One of those "odd ones" that still exist is QF45/46, it still runs SYD-CHC-SYD with a B737NG
I remember the days when we would have a Qantas B767 , a B747-300 and a B747-400 on the ground at the same time in CHC (QF36MEL /QF46SYD /QF56BNE)
how things have changed. :(

Yes, QF45/46 is a B737NG... also operated by Jetconnect.

Bugger.. with it having skippy on the tail, I thought... oh well.

Hmmmm, I am a Qantas Frequent Flyer.
While I don't plan to add many more miles to my plan I am now worried about what I am already entitled to.

It is something like a 6000 Km round trip at the moment. What are my chances ?

Its a really interesting point though about the AKL based long-haul cabin crew.Paxing 250 AKL based crew to OZ to start every trip then paxing them back to AKL at the end of every trip :confused: Thats a lot of seats bein taken by crew every day/week/month. And theyre must-ride as they are part of a crew pattern,how long is that suistainable?

Sydney based crew regularly operate the 141/114 AKL return, 121/122 ZQN return and 45/46 CHC return.

Really? Qf mainline cc operate jitconnict flights?

ejectx3,

The flights are crewed by Shorthaul Pilots and Cabin Crew on VH registered aircraft.

Going Boeing
You are off base on the ETOPS issue . There is no point along the AKL-LAX route that is not within 180-min. Anyway the A330 is certified for 240-min just about most countries other than Australia where your CASA seem rather intrangient on the matter of relazing the 180-min standard

You are correct if all the airports on the direct route are "available". When the weather causes an airport to be unsuitable for ETOPS use, the route becomes significantly longer.

I've done AKL-LAX 100s of times.
The availability of PLCH brings in NCRG or NTAA but strong westerlies can do that too. The flight times don't shift that much if a port is unavailable. Maybe a few out and then it would become significantly longer.

Over the last year on my many trips to AKL intl airport, I've only ever seen ZK-reg 737s. A VH would stick out like a sore thumb, perhaps I'm there at the wrong time of day...