Some QANTAS news
matt weber
>QF is delaying 4 380s by up to a year.
>Also delaying 12 737s by up to a year.
>General capacity decrease of 5%.
>On some routes (San Francisco and Brasil were mentioned), they are
>reducing First Class apacity immediatly. How ? They will simply sell a
>number of physical first class seats as "business class" seats which
>increases business class capacity while reducing the number of seats
>available for purchase in first class.
Same way they did it before they had 2 class 747's, sell and service
the First Class cabin as Business Class. For example QF dropped F
class service on the LAX-AKL run before they had two class 744's.
They just sold the F seats as C until they had two class 744's
available. Usually the FF elites get the F seats. However they got
Business class service
Snce the downgrade is seasonal, it probably doesn't make economic
sense to take the aircraft out of service twice a year to re-arrange
the cabin. QF has for more than 20 years sold the F cabin as C when
necessary. For example the Bilateral with Korea originally didn't
permit F, but QF needed the lift capacity for freight out of SEL, so
they simply sold the F cabin as C (that was about 1990).
Twice I have been on BA long Haul 777's that ended up being used on
intra-European routes, the F cabin was used for C, and the BA Gold
Executive Card holders got the F seats..
What QANTAS isn't talking about is part of the problem is their F
product isn't all that competitive on some routes.
For example one of the routes F is being removed from is the
MEL-HKG-LHR route. Given a choice among BA, QF or CX F products on
the route, I am not sure whose is best. Depends upon your likes and
dislikes, but there is no doubt in my mind about who is on the bottom
of the pile..QF. If the price is the same, wouldn't you fly the
carrier that provides the best F product?
So nothing really new here.
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