Originally Posted by
Ausriver
I am sure there is reasons for CX not to have F. The service was took away about 10 years ago, maybe it didn't work out back then. However, there were only 3 or 4 flights to China a day from SYD back then. Look at the traffic now, there are about 20 flights a day to China from SYD, most secondary cities in China offers direct flights to SYD. Both CZ and QF are using A380s during Dec, Jan and Feb. And also if considering all the transit traffic to Europe and NA? I doubt it would be that hard to CX to sell 6 F seats a day for SYD while there are about over 5000 seats sold between SYD and China alone on daily basis.
*sigh* It's not as simple as just about selling 6 F seats a day. QRC and many others have offered the reasons repeatedly, and I'm going to reiterate on the most important ones.
It's about the lack of F equipment - the scarcity of which means CX will deploy them to high-yield places where there is more-than-ample demand (note the more) where they can jack up prices. CX probably could sell 6 F seats to Australia, sure. But they could also sell 6 F seats to say SFO/LAX, and SFO/LAX may have higher demand. So you jack up the price so that you get enough demand for 6 at a higher price. Voila. If it's just about selling 6 F seats, I could throw them to places like Kota Kinabalu and get it over with by drastically lowering the F price, but it wouldn't make sense from a profit-maximising basis.
6 more F seats also means a reduction in J and Y seats - the plane isn't going to mysteriously increase space unless CX goes and buy something bigger to replace the 77G and 77H. If CX is doing so well selling out the J and Y cabin as you say, they could be making more profit on these than 6 F seats. Why then, would CX swap out for an uncertainty in the F demand when profit is certain on the J and below cabins?
Originally Posted by
1010101
Just look at the list of destinations in the wiki, 6 of the most important cities in North America and the 4 capitals of Europe + Switzerland. I'm sure CX would add F if they could, but not at the expense of any of those destinations. Now they have more slack on the 77H fleet maybe they will resume sending F cabins to SYD although the Australian economy is not exactly making a case for it.
And
1010101 has provided the second one. The Australian economy isn't making a case for it. And Mainland Chinese people are likely to travel direct with Chinese carriers rather than go through CX. 5000 seats can be sold between China and SYD daily, but who's taking most of the bulk and growth? And what are the demographics of these people? Travellers? Chinese businessmen? Carriers like CZ, CA, MU, or smaller ones like Xiamen or Hainan launching to second and third tier Chinese cities are the one expanding this market. And the volume of the market doesn't determine nor indicate the yield of the market as well - you could very well just be transporting busloads of Y and zilch premium traffic.