Originally Posted by
Toula
You have to remember that Sydney has a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 am., so pushing the departure from Honolulu back by a couple of hours would likely mean they would not be able to turn around the same night.
I am under the impression that the SYD arrival/departure times are pretty much etched in stone -- if they operated much later, they would run a risk of having even a slightly off-schedule departure nixed by curfew. If they ran much earlier, even fewer pax starting their days on the west coast could connect.
I have heard that HA tries to assign their highest reliability a/c to the SYD run, as if it departs HNL three or more hours off timetable the 451 runs a good chance of having to divert owing to the SYD 1100p curfew.
The only solution is to move the west coast connecting flights to earlier departure times but as has been pointed out upthread that means more costly crew rest/rotation tactics on the mainland and HA has probably figured the cost would outweigh revenue from added thru bookings.