Is the Qantas A380 really massively increasing capacity to Johannesburg?
Qantas’s inaugural A380 flight to Johannesburg took off this week after more than a year of waiting. Analytic Flying readers probably aren’t surprised as some on social media as it’s a topic we covered at the time of the announcement. In Sep 2023 we analysed the Australia-South Africa route to provide some context for Qantas’s strategy.
The analysis highlighted how deploying the A380 on the Sydney-Johannesburg route was a very creative move, enabling Qantas to backfill the lost capacity due to the retirement of the B747-400 that plied the route for many years. The analysis also highlighted how Qantas would modulate the frequency, sometimes operating the A380 4-5x per week rather than 6-7x per week that the B787-9 and B747-400.
We argued that it was viable to maintain capacity at lower frequency on the Johannesburg-Sydney route due to the limited competition on direct services. At the time we were skeptical that SAA would return to Perth anytime soon. On that point we were wrong! SAA returned to Perth with 3x weekly flights in April and will increase to 5x weekly in the coming months. SAA have also reestablished their codeshare partnerships with Virgin and Air New Zealand.
Over the last year we have gained more insight on Qantas’s fleet scheduling challenges. While some argue that Qantas don’t have enough long haul aircraft they are also facing a challenge of where to deploy the A380. The continued weakness of the Australia-United States market generates overcapacity risks. This reduces the case for deploying the A380 on its “traditional” US routes. This reinforces Qantas’s strategy:
Instead of Melbourne-Los Angeles returning to daily A380 service, it’s has only returned to 2x weekly A380 and 5x weekly B789.
The A380 then shifts to Sydney-Johannesburg, operating 4-6x weekly, replacing 6-7x weekly B789 flights which can then be redeployed to expand services elsewhere (e.g. new flights to Paris, expansion of flights to New York).