Hobart-Perth direct flights
 

Guess the Alliance F100 hasn't got the legs for that one. Jokes aside its great to see a new route, hopefully it works!

Any -800 drivers crunched the figures? Would there be any payload restriction off RW30 in HB with I'm guessing ~14t of gas. The extra 500m on the new runway would no doubt help

Buckshot... 75 tonne at 30 degrees in the most common variant, and that's before anything fancy like touching bleed switches. 43t aeroplane, even with 170 pax (say 17t), that's 15t of fuel. nil wind rw30. I don't see problems.

Several airlines at various stages have tried ADL-HBA with very little success so my guess is that HBA-PER will end up the same way. This is my home state and a straw poll indicates that very few are interested in PER. The majority of people are more interested in OOL, particularly in winter. I could be wrong but I predict this will end in tears. Don't know about VA but the QF variant with 26k engines will lift 79T off RWY12 in Dry conditions and nil wind but this reduces to 75 on a wet RWY or on 30 at 30 degrees

We are all in agreement the worst case scenario is clearly RWY30 WET @ 30 degrees, but let's break that down and compare with VA's OOL-PER, which was introduced prior to the runway extension at OOL and did require seats to be blocked out. HBA is the driest capital city in the country, so the wet runway won't occur as often as in OOL (I'm trying to say this with a straight face as it's currently pi$$ing down in HBA and has been all weekend!). A 30 degree day will occur about twice per month from October to March, and never from April to September. Furthermore, with a 1930 take-off time, the temperature will have dropped well below 30 degrees for the Monday and Wednesday flights, but may occur for the Friday 1445 flight. Even then, with a 75 tonne TOW (which includes the 4T penalty for RWY30 due terrain limitations to the north), it can make it. This assumes a full load of pax; make it a typical 80 per cent load and you get an extra 3T or so to play with. All in all, I'd say once per year at most the flight may have to divert to ADL or KGI (otherwise ditch the bags and send them separately via MEL), but this is no different to a number of recent tanscon BNE-PER flights that diverted to MEL or ADL.

With regards to the success of ADL-HBA, JQ's exit was in 2006, well before MONA was built and the recent surge in passengers which has made HBA consistently the fastest growing airport in the country. The VA exit in 2009 was a month after TT began the route with 319s four times per week in competition, and occurred simultaneously with VA dropping 3 daily MEL-ADL services, one of which was the aircraft that operated MEL-ADL-HBA-ADL-MEL. You don't operate a route with a daily 73H for five years if it's not viable; you either cut it after two years or reduce frequency to a few per week. It would be an indictment on the JQ leadership if the recently reintroduced three per week ADL-HBA was not increased to daily for NW18-19, especially given it operates on arguably the three lowest demand days of the week, and the aircraft sits idle in ADL on the other days.

HBA-PER will have about 50,000 seats per year at three return services per week. Tourism figures from TAS quote 50,000 annual isitors from WA; figures from WA quote 40,000 annual visitors from TAS. That makes 90,000 tourists, which is 180,000 return seats, not to mention increasing the market due to the nonstop service which cuts 2-3 hours off the trip each way, and not to mention any business or mining travel. VA's HBA-PER will work; the Government needs it to so as to justify the $40M runway extension given the current lack of interest in direct flights to Asia.

Where is the market demand coming from for HBA-PER ?

all the west aussies going home of course...

The Tasmanian Government was super keen to get QF operating PER-HBA to coincide with both PER-LHR and the runway extension at HBA but it didn't happen. It is almost certain VA's PER-HBA is underwritten or at least heavily subsidised, hence little to no risk for VA who are possibly using an aircraft that would otherwise be idle in PER.