Last year we did an analysis of Qantas’s decision to reroute its New York flights through Auckland, replacing their historic Los Angeles-New York tag-on flight.
It's certainly something to consider. NZ's westbound load factors are consistently lower than eastbound (all but one month). We don't see the same for QF though with westbound load factors lower than eastbound for an equal number of months. This is indicative of payload restrictions being more significant on westbound for NZ compared to QF. This is to be expected given NZ's B789's have 275 seats compared to 236 on QF.
But some counterpoints:
1) NZ's load factors have worsened significantly since QF entered the route, so an already difficult situation due to payload penalties has been made significantly worse.
2) Payload penalties would've been known to NZ before they started the route. These can be tolerated if the revenue generation for the seats you can sell are excellent, but with only 27 business class and 33 premium economy seats, is this viable? By comparison, QF's B789's have only 236 seats, but 42 business and 28 premium economy.
3) They've endured pretty crap months on the eastbound legs (which should be better). Sometimes in the 40s and 50s.
Do the load factor calcs account for Air NZ blocking seats on this route (especially JFK-AKL)?
It's certainly something to consider. NZ's westbound load factors are consistently lower than eastbound (all but one month). We don't see the same for QF though with westbound load factors lower than eastbound for an equal number of months. This is indicative of payload restrictions being more significant on westbound for NZ compared to QF. This is to be expected given NZ's B789's have 275 seats compared to 236 on QF.
But some counterpoints:
1) NZ's load factors have worsened significantly since QF entered the route, so an already difficult situation due to payload penalties has been made significantly worse.
2) Payload penalties would've been known to NZ before they started the route. These can be tolerated if the revenue generation for the seats you can sell are excellent, but with only 27 business class and 33 premium economy seats, is this viable? By comparison, QF's B789's have only 236 seats, but 42 business and 28 premium economy.
3) They've endured pretty crap months on the eastbound legs (which should be better). Sometimes in the 40s and 50s.