Analytic Flying

Rancid airport for connections, yet a stellar network. Strong hubs become incredibly difficult to shift!

Chart of the week #27: Who the hell flies to Frankfurt anyway? A quick look at Lufthansa's Frankfurt and Munich hubs

NEW: Who the hell flies to Frankfurt anyway? A quick look at Lufthansa's Frankfurt and Munich hubs

Data doesn't lie, most people aren't really flying to Frankfurt, but it's one hell of a connecting hub!
www.analyticflying.com/p/chart-of-t...

Why should you read our recent article about Qantas's Project Sunrise?

Well the CEO thinks you should! It'll be worth upgrading to a subscription just for this! It's long, but it might be the most important thing you read this year, well this week at least 🤣

United's low density B787-9: everyone is missing the point about payload restrictions A few weeks back United Airlines published the seat map of their new low density B787-9 configuration, leaving tongues wagging for the exceptionally large premium, and by contrast small economy cabins...

🚨NEW: A few weeks back there was a lot of tongue wagging at United's new premium heavy B787-9:

It's not about a premium boom but rather payload restricted ULH routes → if they're forced to sell fewer seats, then they need to sell more premium seats!

www.analyticflying.com/p/uniteds-lo...

🔴Her most frequent ports of call were NRT (155 sectors), HKG (120) & HND (106)
🔴She visited 17 different airports (11 foreign), although her trips to ADL CNS were due to in-flight diversions
🔴One she probably won't visit again is ICN with the route now discontinued & taken over by JQ

🔴She flew 4709h compared to 5542 on B787, but we must consider she was out of action for 6 weeks
🔴That's an avg daily utilisation of 12.9 hours (14.7 hours/day if we remove AOG time), still lower than the B787's 15.1 hours/day → that's still pretty good going considering she's 22 years young!

🔴This Joey Joy flight was poignant → we'll post about that tomorrow & if it doesn't make you emotional then nothing will!
🔴QPA covered 2.1m nm, < B787's 2.6m, despite doing 101> sectors
🔴Reason is somewhat obvious: A330 has a shorter range, avg sector length of 3677nm compared to B787's 5568nm

🔴This comprised: 531 long haul (+2 for diversions), 4 Tasman, 11 transcon to PER, 13 short haul (+11 positioning) & 1 special
🔴The special: Pathfinders Joey Joy flight, 1h flip around SYD → a long-running, volunteer-driven event to give disabled, disadvantaged & ill children a 1st flight experience

Yesterday we looked at a year in the life of a Qantas B787-9, tracking her through 2025. Today it's the turn of A330-300 Kununurra VH-QPA:

🔴She had an inauspicious start to the year, grounded in BNE until 15 Feb waiting for an engine
🔴After the late start she still managed 573 sectors, 101> B787!

Haha, good catch! Well, she didn't land there, but she did take 3 sightseeing flights to the area around McMurdo Station and no other way to represent it on the map!

Haha, very true, although a lot of the avgeeks will shame us if we don't use nautical mile 😂

Australia has shifted from ETOPS to EDTO, but it did require an increase from 180 to 330 minutes to operate the route. 330 minutes is the baseline ETOPS/EDTO certification for the B787, but Australia were late adopting it.

As an individual route, yes, but LAX and DFW were more frequency since they're fragmented over BNE, MEL & SYD, whereas SCL is concentrated over SYD.

🔴3 Antarctic charters & 1 from NOLA
🔴Most common: SYD-SCL (25x return), although trans Pacific to/from LA or DFW was similar
🔴Most frequent airport: took off or landed 273x at SYD, far ahead of PER & AKL (100 & 96x)
🔴Longest: PER-LHR at 7829nm but wasn't her longest in the air with DFW-MEL at 17:32

A year in the life of a B787-9: we tracked Qantas's B787-9 VH-ZNA Great Southern Land through 2025. She's had quite a ride:

🔴472 sectors, incl 5 charters & 7 positioning flights, covering 2.6m nm & avg 5568nm/sector
🔴10 day transit in HKG for heavy maintenance, so she averaged 1.3 sectors/day

There's been lots of commentary about Finnair's new Melbourne flight. Part that struck us was how none is supported by any data, just lots of vibes. You'd be less surprised if you saw some data ...

Would be a pleasure to!

How to think, not feel about Qantas's Project Sunrise Project Sunrise, the much vaunted strategy by Qantas to fly non-stop from the eastern seaboard of Australian to London and New York finally looks like coming to fruition in 2027.

🚨NEW: How to think, not feel about Qantas's Project Sunrise

It's provocative: tyranny of distance & inability to compete on cost with one-stop carriers means they don’t have a choice other than a “deal with the devil”!

Let us change your mind ...
www.analyticflying.com/p/how-to-thi...

Is Qantas really that Sydney centric? Alternative working title: Does Qantas really hate Melbourne?

🚨Does Qantas really hate Melbourne? Or rather is Qantas really that Sydney centric?

See our latest analysis which shows they've become less Sydney-centric while Melbourne has felt the love thanks to Jetstar. Real story is how they've come to love Brisbane!

www.analyticflying.com/p/is-qantas-...

Why push back?
🔴It's obvious in video that airline staff were speaking about "booking" (booking dot com), yet he speaks as though he booked directly with airline so as to blame them.
🔴It's almost though he played for the setup. Subjective, but it's as if he knew & was expecting it. Contrived? 5/5

🟠 He didn't check or fix it, or maybe he suspected it & thought it would make for a good video!
🟠Ivorians were pissed so told their side → if he was right, then why delete? He hasn't deleted similar critiques after airlines pushed back! Is it a case of "if there's smoke, there's fire"? /4

Some observations:
🟠OTA likely mismatched fare displaying business when it wasn't. This happens with obscure airlines in far off places.
🟠Josh is an expert: he has knowledge & expertise to recognise this. If price is too good to be true, it is too good to be true! /3

🔴Josh claims he bought business ticket & airline staff tried to extort money out of him. Of course he plays the "victim" card!
🔴Ivorians claim his business ticket was actually economy & OTA made an error. He threw a hissy fit & airline upgraded him for free. He was filming & they knew who he was! /2

🚨💥Absolutely wild Josh Cahill story ...

A few weeks ago he posted a scathing critique of Air Côte d'Ivoire, claiming airline & staff scammed him. Following a response from Ivorian Foreign Minister, he quietly deleted it!

TLDR 🧵

Is the Jetstar to Sri Lanka rumour credible? We hate speculation and we really hate speculation surrounding new routes.

✈️ 🇦🇺 🇱🇰 A few weeks ago we saw a rumour circulating on regarding Jetstar starting a new route between Melbourne and Colombo. We typically take a dim view of new route speculation, but this one seems plausible. We decided to take a detailed look:
www.analyticflying.com/p/is-the-jet...

Analytic Flying Capacity Tracker: Australian International Airline Seat Capacity Analytic Flying’s capacity tracking tools track monthly international seat capacity to Australia. The development of the dashboard was motivated by the uneven return of international airline traffic a...

www.analyticflying.com/p/analytic-f...

Virgin’s missing million seats a boon for Jetstar The gap made by the exit of the country’s second-largest airline from many overseas routes has been filled by Qantas’ low-cost carrier, new data shows.

Virgin’s missing million international seats a boon for Jetstar

Thanks to AFR for using our data! Data is available on our updated Capacity Tracker dashboard. Filter data by any combination of airline, city, and country of origin. Link in reply ⬇️
www.afr.com/companies/tr...

Five and a half years! That's what is took Australian international airline capacity to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

Five and a half years! That's what is took Australian international airline capacity to recover what was destroyed in a few weeks by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We take a data driven look at just how things have changed. Who are the winners and losers?

www.analyticflying.com/p/five-and-a...

Chart of the week #26: Australian international airline seat capacity finally reaches its pre-COVID level This morning, BITRE released July 2025’s international aviation data, revealing an important milestone: international airline seat capacity has finally reached its pre-COVID level!

Huge milestone in today's BITRE data release: Australian international airline seat capacity finally reaches its pre-COVID level

www.analyticflying.com/p/chart-of-t...

Dismal prospects for trans-Tasman competition Over the last few months we’ve seen Qantas and Jetstar come out swinging with new routes and capacity increases across its trans-Tasman network.

💥NEW ANALYSIS: Dismal prospects for trans-Tasman competition

A detailed look:
🔴Why Qantas & Jetstar's increasing dominance is bad
🔴Why Air NZ can't respond
🔴Why 5th freedom carriers won't respond
🔴And why Virgin have no incentive to respond

www.analyticflying.com/p/dismal-pro...