Thursday night’s QF94 was Qantas’s last westbound A380 flight on the Los Angeles-Melbourne route, and Saturday’s QF93 their last eastbound A380 Melbourne-Los Angeles flight. It’s also Qantas’s final scheduled A380 departure from Melbourne given the upcoming closing of Melbourne’s A380 flight deck crew base and the forthcoming retirement of Qantas’s A380 fleet starting in 2028.
At present, QF93/94 are operated daily with the flying split between the A380 (2x/week) and B787-9 (5x/week). The withdrawal of the A380 will see the route being flown daily by the B787-9, resulting in a significant loss of capacity, including the loss of first class capacity on the route. Weekly capacity will decline by 498 seats (from 2150 to 1652), and seat losses across all cabins (28F, 56J, 64W, 350Y).
We’ve seen a lot of commentary ascribing change to declining demand on the route, but there’s something far more nuanced at play. To us it seems less about demand and more about operational efficiency and aircraft utilisation. What Melbourne-Los Angeles looses allows aircraft to be utilised more efficiently to generate additional capacity on other routes.
Our argument centers on the retiming of the eastbound QF93 sector from Melbourne to Los Angeles following the replacement of the A380 with the B787-9 from its current daytime departure (at noon during the northern winter season and 9:45am in the northern summer) to nighttime departure (at 10:45pm during the northern winter and 9:30pm during the northern summer).
Northern winter season:
QF93 MEL-LAX 12:00pm 7:25am → 10:45pm 6:05pm
QF94 LAX-MEL 10:50pm 9:30am+2
Northern summer season:
QF93 MEL-LAX 9:45am 7:05am → 9:30pm 6:50pm
QF94 LAX-MEL 9:50pm 6:45am+2
So why are Qantas making this change, and what are the implications? Let’s explore …