Qr To Sydney???
 

I have been with a handful of people from QR today on un-related business. They have reported the following to me.

Updates / corrections / confirmations from any source would of course be most welcome:-


1) QR is planning to introduce services to Australia at the end of this year, as an extension of current services to KUL and CGK.

2) In order to undertake such routings which would not be desirable on the A300, QR may wet lease in additional A330 capacity. It is rumored that Aer Lingus will be the nominated supplier.

3) Is it true that during certain weather conditions, the A300 cannot fly directly from DOH to CMN (hence recent needs for tech stops at Tunis-Carthage)? If this is the case, and since the flights to Milan and ALL flights to LHR are now supposed to operate on the A330, how can QR handle this business with only two of the type? Its impossible.

4) Some of the LHR services may be downgraded to A300 service;

5) QR are in talks to start flying to TIP, TUN and possibly Algiers;

6) QR are considering weekly rotations to Glasgow and Birmingham (UK), where there is currently limited capacity for large Asian communities travelling to Pakistan and India, without needing to stop twice in transit (situation worse from GLA than from BHX which is now served by EK and PIA.)

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I would welcome any feedback on these issues.

There was mention of that in the Kuala Lumpur press, TPE and MNL have also been mentioned as extensions of KUL. The CEO of QR has said on more than one occasion that QR will never fly to the US or Australia since these routes will never be profitable, I guess he had a change of plan. FI or AW said once that QR were not allowed rights to fly into SYD but were offered MEL instead mainly because of pressures exerted by Qantas

It makes sense since Aer Lingus can live without one of their A330's. Also EI's A330's are CF-6 equiped which will make things easier if QR would take the aircraft on dry lease.

Actually only two of the Milan flights are on the A330 and according to the Reservation system the flights will revert to A300 later on. After October the LHR flights will also revert to 9x weekly and I assume the MON and SAT flights will go back to the A300. This will free up one of the A330-200's to do CMN for 3 says of the week and then possibly do a Euro or Asian routes.

It is interesting to note that the CMN route was scheduled to switch over to the A332 on August 1st but never did which was a surprise. I guess they needed capacity in MXP.

Anyway two A330-200's are scheduled to arrive in the First Quarter of next year this should ease up the load on the fleet.


Add MRU, SEZ, MAN, JNB, SHJ, THR, SLL, HYD, COK and NYC.


I think 1x weekly flights make no business sense. If it is a leisure route or VFR route they need at least 3x weekly if they want anychance at attracting J class passengers with good yeilds they need at least 4x weekly frequencies. Imagine all the infrastructure that is to be laid in BHX and GLA for the flights and with not enough flights to spread the costs especially since QR are aiming for lower yeilding VFR Asian traffic I doubt the routes will be a success.

Is the Manchester route confirmed?

Manchester is confirmed for 4x weekly non-stop A300-600R service. Though I don't know the exact date but it is supposed to be within the next 6 months. Like FRA and MXP two flights will be daytime and depart DOH at around noon and two other flights will depart Doha at night. That way they can have connections to most of the Gulf and Asia.

IMO QR should use the additional leased in capacity to concentrate on adding frequencies to Asia Pacific which as you know the flights to BKK, MNL, KUL and CGK have high passenger figures, and possibly start HKG or SIN. KUL was supposed to go daily from the begining of summer but it didn't and since the flight leaves 100% full almost every flight and the flight has excellent O&D figures they are loosing a lot of revenue by not increasing frequencies.

I am interested in knowing more about the leased in A330-200. After looking at stats of the EI A330-200 I have realised that they have 31" in Y class as opposed to 32" on QR but Business Class standards are good. So this A330-200 is more suitable for shorter routes than a long DOH-KUL-SYD/MEL routing because it has a more cramped seting configuration in Y class. Also if QR wet-lease the A330-200 what will they do with the EI logo's in the aircraft (seats, life jacket, safety cards etc...) and what about the colours of the seats and the livery of the aircraft it will be inconsistant with the remainder of the fleet and project an unprofessional image. The best bet for them is to wait for the next A330-200 coming in 1Q 2003 which will be sufficient to start 3x weekly flights to Australia through KUL. They should also learn from GF, one of the reasons GF pulled out is because of the low yeilds and to make a low-yeild route work it should not have first class but instead have a 2 class layout which should mean extra seats in Y to lower the CASM, in turn lowering the break even point.

Dont know about the EI A330's MT.

I must admit that I am surprised to hear that they will considering wet leasing in. (It has to be wet, because the Cabin and flight crew situation now is at breaking point at QR. The Cabin crew department could not at this point man an additional A330.

So, I am a bit sceptical about that particular option. But will try and find out more.

Agree with your comments on the KUL sectors. But, is there perhaps a landing rights / slot issue at KUL which would need to be addressed?

I heard that the latest A300 has just arrived. Can you confirm? Didn't see it when I came back from DXB Friday. Normally would be parked down at the Control Tower.

A300Man,

Slots and Landing rights are not really a problem in KUL. KUL are trying to be the next SIN or BKK and want to attract as many airlines as possible to make use of the facilities. Landing fees have been waived and KUL has been offering cash rewards to new airlines into KUL which explains why suddenly you have Qatar Airways, Syrian Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Yemenia innaugrating service and and many others such as EK increasing frequencies.

QR should just wait untill they get more aircraft. Opening a new route requires a lot of capital and work, offices have to be opened, marketing the route, hiring ground/support staff for the route, modifying schedules etc.. adds up to a lot. Also long-haul routes usually take longer than short-haul routes to reach critical mass and break even point so QR would have to have a lot of money to cover the costs. QR have a lot of routes being opened up and if they open too many at once then they will lose a lot of money and lose a lot of focus. SYD/MEL could wait, the routes are not worth all the extra costs and wet-leasing of equipment since they are very low-yeilding and compete with a lot of airlines (EK, QF, BA, MH, SQ, CX, TG, KL...).

According to "mafibacon" the aircraft should arrive this week.

With regard to the Aer Lingus 332s, these aircraft are already committed; also, not all are PTV equipped, the remainder being refitted over the Winter.

There are 333s available, but these are not PTV equipped; this shouldn't take long to do and again, it should be pretty easy to reconfigure Y class seating to 32". Aer Lingus would be more than happy to get shot of a 333 for the Winter, I'm sure.

The aircraft should have sufficient range for DOH-KUL, being already regularly tasked for DUB-ORD; presumably late night departures will be planned?

According to A300Man the wet-leased A330 will be needed for Australia services. Range is DOH-KUL is about 3300nm and KUL-SYD is about 3650nm I don't know if EI's A333 be able to do the 3650nm trip with full cargo loads since they are not the 233t MTOW variant so if QR wants to fly the A330 to SYD the A330-200 would be needed. As with PTV's I don't think they will be an issue as QR's A300 don't have them.

BD also have an A330-200 to spare and it won't matter that they use RR engines since in a conventional Wet Lease deal all maintanence is done by the lessor, but that would mean BD would have to have Trent 700 certified Tech Support available in DOH in case of engine problems which will lead to increased costs.

The A330-200 CF6 operators are:

Air France
Qatar Airways
Volare Airlines
Aer Lingus
TAM Brasil

I can think only of TAM and Volare who are able to provide capacity.

There are also two parked CF6 A330-200's which are ex-Canada3000.