Jetstar Question?

[Jarden S]

I have a question on Jetstar operations, maybe someone who works for the airline can answer?

Here in Cairns the daily Jetstar A330 arrives from NRT at 04.50am and sits at the terminal to 12.30 and some days to 13,15 before going back to NRT. It seems a terrible waist of a million $ aircraft as not used for a domestic leg in that time with 7-8 hours it could do a return to BNE or OOL. There is a early JQ A320 flight at 6am to BNE that could be substituted with the A330 and the A320 could be deployed elsewhere. The question I ask is the revenue from the flight to NRT enough to pay for it to sit around the rest of the day. In the Qantas days they had better aircraft utilisation with 1 767 doing SYD-CNS-NRT return and 1 767 doing BNE-CNS-NRT return. What are your thoughts on this?

[Brandon Giacomin]

Yes I agree, I think they should do something between 0450 and 1230/1315.
A CNS-BNE 332 flight would be good. The a/c would arrive in CNS at 0450 then departs for BNE at 0600 as JQ929 and arrives in BNE at 0805 but the next JQ BNE-CNS flight doent depart BNE till 1200, so they would have to start another BNE-CNS flight or just retime the 1200 one. So depart BNE at 0905 maybe and get to CNS at 1130 and depart for NRT at 1230 or 1315. So a BNE-CNS flight would fit in very well.
And JQ restart CNS-KIX flights in APR and the a/c for the new flights has a long wait in CNS aswell, she arrives at 0510 and departs at 1220.

[Jarden S]

They could replace flight QF782 from BNE and operate the A330 back to CNS in its place. Also here in CNS they have some A320's with a lot of down time too, although not as expensive jet to sit idle compared with the bigger brother A330. They have JQ58 from 8am to 12.45pm and JQ966 from 13.00 to 18.15 until she is off to PER JQ978 3 days a week the other days it waits till the next day to 06.10 to go to ADL or OOL. So at the moment they could easily operate the PER runs daily with the existing A320 which at the moment is spare 4 nights a week.

[Marty H]

People need to realise its not the simplicty of putting an aircraft into use, if the flight is not going to attract enough pax or there might be issues with crewing the aircraft JQ or any airline isnt going to operate a service, clearly if it was possible to crew and going to make a profit JQ would be doing it, airlines dont just fly aircraft to please the likes of the thread starter because its sitting in CNS or it would be cool to fly on.

[Chris Z]

In the system as of April 2010, CNSPER is operating 6 nights a week (exc Sat).

CNSADL is also operating 6 times a week, standard early morning departure most days with Tues/Sat operating an afternoon/evening service.

One of the reasons the a/c sit around, is because they are already flying big hours per day (back of the clock stuff), and the 4'ish hours during the morning, is used for maintenence (if req) etc. Also, aircraft break down away from base, and having a bit of a buffer also allows for the schedule to be picked up the following day generally, so the domino effect isn't as bad.

That is why they 'sit around'.

[matt_h]

Originally Posted by Marty H

People need to realise its not the simplicty of putting an aircraft into use, if the flight is not going to attract enough pax or there might be issues with crewing the aircraft JQ or any airline isnt going to operate a service, clearly if it was possible to crew and going to make a profit JQ would be doing it, airlines dont just fly aircraft to please the likes of the thread starter because its sitting in CNS or it would be cool to fly on.

Also the issue of it arriving Inter and operating domestic flights would result in towing on and off etc.. Otherwise they would have to operate as international tag flights..
As MArty has said some people do not realise that aircraft need a time to rest and can;t be operatiing 24/7..

[Jarden S]

Originally Posted by Marty H

to please the likes of the thread starter .

What's that smart comment for? I not asking them to please me. I was simply asking a question on an operational perspective.

[Kain C]

I think that you are all being a bit harsh on the poster here. The way I read his post is that he has thought of a partial alternative to JQ's schedule, and he can see several positives to this change. He does not list any negatives. So I think what he is trying to ask is; given that JQ do not operate the alternative schedule that he has listed, can someone out there "in the know" tell him what the negatives are, as he concludes that there must be some otherwise JQ would be operating the alternative schedule.

Apart from the fact that there are a number of people on this board who instantly jump to the defence of anyone in any airline managment position with comments such as

clearly if it was possible to crew and going to make a profit JQ would be doing it

, i.e. assuming that every airline manager knows exactly what they are doing and makes the correct decisions 100% of the time! Of course in their eyes it seems impossible for anyone to make a mistake, such as:

(i) Insisting on getting a flight engineer on all your 767 aircraft (clearly the right thing to do and going to make a profit; if it wasn't, then AN wouldn't have done it!)

(ii) Insisting on getting your 777's without the freight door, and hence unable to fully utilise the freight facilities on your aircraft (clearly the right thing to do and going make a profit; if it wasn't, then VA wouldn't have done it!)

(iii) Insisting on getting the understrength floors on your A330s, only to change your mind on where you were going to use them and unable to put the seats in that you need (clearly the right thing to do and going make a profit; if it wasn't, then QF wouldn't have done it!)

And I could go on, and on, and on, but I won't, because no manager ever stuffs up, ever, apparantly!

[Kain C]

So, looking at Andrew's list there, I can find lots of possible reasons for JQ not operating Jarden's proposed schedule:

Commercial (yield/return); [Maybe they wouldn't be able to fill 300+ seats daily all year 'round]

Aircraft utilisation (OTP/disruption recovery); [The aircraft will need some downtime to enable recovery after a delay]

Maintenance (capability/resourcing/ground time/work required); [The aircraft will need some downtime for maintainance]

Resourcing (crew and ground personnel); [The crew from the international legs will need a rest, and it would take more crew to operate the 330 domestically compared with the 320]

Infrastructure (constraints/capability/feasibility/cost's/resourcing); [Possibility of no 330 capable gates at BNE in the time required?]

Services (cleaning/catering/quarantine/cabin prep); [Quarantine going from International to Domesic and v.v. maybe an issue. Obviously a larger aircraft takes longer to clean or requires additional cleaners, hence more cost]

Competitors (schedule/capacity/market share); [Especially when QF,DJ have an early morning CNS-BNE too]

Network (impact/conflict/upcoming plans). [JQ are significantly expanding in CNS next year, so this can come into consideration too.]

[Marty H]

Okay maybe a bit harsh but some aviation freaks dont truely understand why and why not airlines operate the aircraft the way they do, some of the truely ridiculous statements Ive read from two in particular posters towards aircraft usage really tells me they dont have a clue and it gets my back up sometimes, airlines arent like in 80's when it was a luxury to fly and airlines did 'milkruns', money/profit is made by quick direct services to anywhere on the planet, you have to remember airlines have huge costs to cover everytime an aircraft lands and takes off such as landing and parking fee's, terminal costs, employee costs, security costs and it goes on.