The COO of Strategic says Air Australia will be launched in Nov..

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How long will they last on the BNE-MEL domestic run plus MEL-HNL and BNE-HNL??

QF744

Quoting QF744 (Thread starter): How long will they last on the BNE-MEL domestic run plus MEL-HNL and BNE-HNL??

Is the MEL-BNE leg just to feed the MEL-HNL & BNE-HNL flights?

EK413

Quoting EK413 (Reply 1): Is the MEL-BNE leg just to feed the MEL-HNL & BNE-HNL flights?

Yes, these domestic flights are mainly to act as feeders.

Hopefully, Air Australia is able to bring something new to the market and tap into the markets that QF/JQ and Virgin have ignored or dropped.

GREEN & white livery??? Not a lot in Aus is green... What about some more iconic Aus colours such as green & gold?? Why not 'borrow' QF's RED colour, just to confuse the consumer?? And stick a koala hanging on to the tail!!! Instant recognition. That will have lot of Americans squealing "OMG! Look at the koala bears!" (Sorry, they're not, not, NOT bears, folks...) or even better: "OMG! Look at the QANTAS bears!"  

My armchair prediction: doomed to fail, but hey, look at Macao Air... they operate to/from SYD...

Quoting QF744 (Thread starter): How long will they last on the BNE-MEL domestic run

When it first announced this, it said "four glights a day" - which I thought was overkill. But if it is, as the COO suggests, 2 x roundtrips, I think they could do okay, given it will be feeding its international flights.

Quoting trent1000 (Reply 3): GREEN & white livery???

I think it is a terrific livery, clean and bright.

Good luck to it.  

mariner

Quoting MEA (Reply 2): Yes, these domestic flights are mainly to act as feeders.

Quoting mariner (Reply 4): given it will be feeding its international flights.

I get the logic -- but surely that's only relevant on 4 days a week (at least from the beginning - two days when MEL pax have to go through BNE and 2 days when BNE pax have to go through MEL). They are going to struggle on this route the other half of the time...

Very sad to see, after some great TR in BusinessClass, that AirAustralia will move to be a low-cost airline... But it may be the market demands.

Therefore, I would like to know, if even the A330 to HNL goes full low-cost (without BusinessClass). Any dea?!

Quoting debonair (Reply 6): Very sad to see, after some great TR in BusinessClass, that AirAustralia will move to be a low-cost airline... But it may be the market demands.

Why is that sad? It means cheaper tickets for us and attracts people who couldnt affort to fly before.

Quoting debonair (Reply 6): Therefore, I would like to know, if even the A330 to HNL goes full low-cost (without BusinessClass). Any dea?!

Their current A332 has business class, and their primary competition (JQ) has business class on international flights, so I'd assume that it's here to stay.

Quoting qf002 (Reply 5): I get the logic -- but surely that's only relevant on 4 days a week (at least from the beginning - two days when MEL pax have to go through BNE and 2 days when BNE pax have to go through MEL). They are going to struggle on this route the other half of the time...

But that doesnt take into account HKT or DPS (from BNE) does it? Also from March both BNE and MEL to HNL goes thrice weekly... How big is VCs domestic network out of BNE?

I would personally like to see VC be bought/merge with another carrier to give it critical capacity. Perhaps with DJ to become DJ's JQ? Or with TT (although doubt SQ would be to happy...) for a decent domestic network with the Air Australia brand.

Quoting trent1000 (Reply 3): GREEN & white livery??? Not a lot in Aus is green... What about some more iconic Aus colours such as green & gold??

I can certainly see the green and gold in this livery.... There is plenty of green on the east coast anyway...

So these guys won't mind?

View Large View Medium

Photo © Mickael Payet

Quoting Coronado990 (Reply 10):

Only if they start operating NOU or RUN

Quoting smi0006 (Reply 9): But that doesnt take into account HKT or DPS (from BNE) does it? Also from March both BNE and MEL to HNL goes thrice weekly.

  

And presumably the China flights will be announced in the not too distant future. I think it is quite a good idea to connect the two developing "hubs."

I also think there may be a bit more traffic than just feed.

mariner

Shame that the flag winglets are gone (according to the image on the link).

I liked it!  

Whatg about "Strategic Airlines Luxembourg"... ? Will they keep the name?

What's happening to the A320's based in Europe? Will they remain operating as Strategic Airlines and will they recieve the new green livery of Air Australia?

Dave

I seriously think that a route that could be considered is Perth - Christchurch direct with a widebody or via Melbourne or Adelaide in an A320, a couple of times a week. With strong passenger numbers between NZ and WA I think it is a viable option, especially with the amount of FIFO workers that reside in NZ and who come back for there rostered R&R. Air NZ is the only airline to offer a direct service with Perth - Auckland and the price of an economy ticket can get quite expesive due to this.

What do people think, I have only just signed up on A.Net so that I could put this question out there....??

That livery is awesome, wish them the best of luck.

Quoting trent1000 (Reply 3): GREEN & white livery??? Not a lot in Aus is green... What about some more iconic Aus colours such as green & gold?? Why not 'borrow' QF's RED colour, just to confuse the consumer?? And stick a koala hanging on to the tail!!! Instant recognition. That will have lot of Americans squealing "OMG! Look at the koala bears!" (Sorry, they're not, not, NOT bears, folks...) or even better: "OMG! Look at the QANTAS bears!"

As you already mentioned green is one of Australia's national colours, it's a great choice in my opinion, something different from QF & VA, VA birds already look like QF from a distance. The livery also features the Boomerang which is another Australian symbol.

Quoting trent1000 (Reply 3): My armchair prediction: doomed to fail, but hey, look at Macao Air... they operate to/from SYD...

There's no such airline as Macao Air, Viva Macau already ceased all operations, and Air Macau never served SYD.

up to 4x daily MEL-BNE flights is not about feeding the HNL, HKT/DPS flights - that's trying to establish a market for themselves. In January/Feb it's going to be interesting to see the BITRE numbers on the MEL-BNE sector.

YE June 2010, YE June 2011, % growth:

Melbourne - Sydney 7,640,500 7,907,300 3.5%
Brisbane - Sydney 4,333,100 4,449,000 2.7%
Brisbane - Melbourne 2,795,900 3,110,700 11.3%

there's already been big growth on MEL-BNE, I wonder what it's going to be like with 5 carriers on it (most competitive Australian domestic route with Air Australia on it come the end of the year!).

Quoting tayser (Reply 17): up to 4x daily MEL-BNE flights is not about feeding the HNL, HKT/DPS flights - that's trying to establish a market for themselves.

If an airline flies "1 x daily" to anywhere, that generally means 1 x round trip - there and back - to that destination. "I x weekly" generally means 1 x weekly there and back each week.

So I think we need to establish terms here. "4 x daily" means - to me - four round-trip flights a day - a total of eight flights.

But the COO says "2 x round-trips daily" which, in my book, is 2 round-trip flights per day (four flights) and now I don't know which it is. I tried the website, but that wasn't much help.

If it is 4 x daily round-trips (eight flights) then I think it is too much. If it 2 x daily roundtrips (4 flights), that seems to me to be entirely manageable.

mariner

The Luxembourg part will remain Strategic as far as i know.One of their 320's will come to BNE to make 4 A320's based in Australia.This has already been announced.

Australian national colours are green and gold.

And they have rights for China flights too, so Beijing or Shanghai must be on the cards soon!

Good to see another Aussie airline expanding so fast!

I LOVE the livery. Very fresh and modern IMO - and love the blended colours on the engines.

I have concerns as to whether they have the capital backing to survive in the longer term.....however I wish them the best - hope they do well in the low cost sector.

Quoting cam747 (Reply 21): I LOVE the livery. Very fresh and modern IMO

  

Couldn't agree more!

Throw in my hat for loving the livery...

Quoting klmd11l (Reply 16): The livery also features the Boomerang which is another Australian symbol.

It was instantly recognizable. Someone did their artistic homework.

Quoting smi0006 (Reply 9): But that doesnt take into account HKT or DPS (from BNE) does it? Also from March both BNE and MEL to HNL goes thrice weekly... How big is VCs domestic network out of BNE?

You are quite right, I had completely overlooked them. But I still don't think that this is a case of just vying for feed. In all honesty, if you wanted to carry feed then you'd be better off running the A332 MEL-BNE-HNL or BNE-MEL-HNL and selling the domestic leg as well to help fill some more seats -- one of the two (or three of the four) daily flights aren't going to match up to their HNL services anyway when they commence, so it's clear to me that they're going for a chunk of the local market, and I worry about that. Despite shying away from competition (not saying that's a bad thing!), this is one of the more competitive routes in Australia, and they're going to have to work really hard to overcome QF, VA, JQ and TT (though TT may have dropped the route for now, I'm not sure)

Quoting qf002 (Reply 24): In all honesty, if you wanted to carry feed then you'd be better off running the A332 MEL-BNE-HNL or BNE-MEL-HNL and selling the domestic leg as well to help fill some more seats -- one of the two (or three of the four) daily flights aren't going to match up to their HNL services anyway when they commence, so it's clear to me that they're going for a chunk of the local market, and I worry about that.

I think they're going for some local market, sure, and I assume it will build as the flights become known, but equally these flights give their pax in either Brisbane of Melbourne more choices.

A Melbourne passenger who wants to come back from HNL on a day when there is no non-stop can come back through BNE and I don't suppose a Brisbane passenger would be too offended to come back via MEL. It's that or wait a couple of days.

And then there's HKT.

Do I think BNE-MEL-BNE will be packed to the gills for the first year or so? Probably not, but I don't think it needs to be, I don't think that is where the real money will be made - or lost. And the flights are starting for the big holiday season so maybe they could do quite well.

mariner

I think there's more of a mid-long term view here. The elephant in the room is SYD - they're avoiding it and picking from the next two busiest domestic destinations (Tiger started this way if memory serves correctly and SYD isn't really all that palpable from offering a spot for new start-ups and services given the (perceived?) lack of infrastructure/slots/whatever).

BNE has the unfortunate(?) claim to fame of having more popular tourist (LCC's target market) destinations immediately to the north and south of it - OOL and MCY. Melbourne as an urban tourist destination is twice as big as Brisbane ever will be and is eating at Sydney's ankles (as seen by the fact domestic tourists now spend more on a trip to Melbourne than they do in Sydney (they spend longer in Melbourne and therefore more money)), so you could put it down to offering another choice for Queenslanders another option to get down here. On the flipside BNE, despite the competition from OOL and MCY, does get the benefit of being close to the Gold and Sunshine coasts and would see a fair bit of traffic which doesnt choose to direct to OOL on TT/DJ/JQ or to MCY on DJ/JQ and they make the land connections from BNE (and when there's cut throat competition and cheaper fares - it would become even more attractive), so there's scope for Air Australia from both origin points to grow a market (4x daily really isn't all that much given that QF are 14x daily, DJ are 12x daily, JQ are 3x daily and TT are 3x daily).

Given a MEL-BNE-MEL / BNE-MEL-BNE turn would only take max 6 hours, potentially even 5 hours and there's no real curfew at either end, 1 aircraft could have a (high) utilisation of 20 hours (assuming 5 hour round trips) to fulfil a 4x daily schedule while they have 3 others to make money on other routes (if the BNE-MEL-BNE sector doesn't prove to be profitable). At a guess 1 aircraft is likely to fly 3 of the 4 daily services which they may eventually ramp up to.

Throw in another 3-4 A320s on top of their 4 they plan to have in Australia and they can do 4x daily BNE-SYD-BNE and 4x daily MEL-SYD-MEL with 2 aircraft with the odd MEL-ADL-MEL-ADL-BNE-ADL flight throughout the day to establish a domestic market with (very) little aircraft.

Interesting that they are adopting Air Australia. This used to be a tag line printed on Australian Airlines' timetables. I guess QF must have given up any registered rights to the name.

Speaking of which, there a some Air Australias alraeady in existence: one seems to be a WA flying school. I suppose that Strategic has thought this through before nominating the name...

cbrboy this has been discussed plenty of times before and YES name has lapsed many years ago.Registration of the name is fine.

qf002 Tiger have not dropped the route and if you look at the BTRE stats the BNE-MEL route is growing and 2 flights a day each way will not bother anyone.

Quoting eaglefarm4 (Reply 28): qf002 Tiger have not dropped the route and if you look at the BTRE stats the BNE-MEL route is growing and 2 flights a day each way will not bother anyone.

Cheers for that -- couldn't be bothered to check! I know that 2 daily isn't going to bother the others -- that's precisely the issue though! If VC can't take 300 (or 600 depending on actual number of flights) daily pax away from the other 4 then they're going to have trouble turning a profit on this route.

I love that new livery - that's the spirit of australia!!! "yellow and green" is the Australian's colors!

Looks nice would like to have liked to have seen a little bit more colour on the body, but apart from that it looks nice.
I hope they do realy well on the MEL-HNL and BNE-HNL.