Originally Posted by
OZFLYER86
Norfolk to OZ mainland is not a normal domestic route. Flights from OZ to Norfolk depart from int terminals & you can buy duty free.
Think the idea of say a Perth(PER) to Maroochydore(MCY) to Auckland(AKL) makes sense in an A321neo.
They already fly seasonally AKL/MCY/AKL, even though Brisbane(BNE) is less than 90 mins drive down the road, as long as not peak hour & Gold Coast(OOL) another 90 mins drive beyond BNE. That seems to work & don't think there's any subsidy involved. An extension to PER would make a lot of sense.
or PER/OOL/AKL.
Only Jetstar does PER/OOL year round (think it's 3 days a week & red eyes, which many people don't like) Virgin do it twice a week in Xmas school holidays.
or maybe better to not fly to AKL, but instead Wellington, Christchurch or Queenstown.
Only Jetstar(JQ) flies OOL/Queenstown(ZQN) nonstop. Surely NZ can compete with JQ.
But they can’t. If there was a more premium based yield on that route the other airlines would already be doing it. QF is twice the size of AirNZ if they cant make it work who else is going to? JQ get put on the routes that QF can’t operate their cost base on. You would be relying on liesure travellers to fill the plane to MCY as few are going to take such a long route to AKL.
Its probably worth highlighting that whilst you are correct OOL-BNE-MCY are all 90 min apart. The population of NZ lives in that catchment and QLD has the highest number of Kiwi expats in Aus.
The notion of more point to point flying to Australia totally makes sense for AirNZ But flying domestic sectors just doesn’t make sense. It would be so poorly executed if they did and a poor utilisation of their fleet and capital when they have so much more opportunity to create a stronger international hub and spoke network out of AKL