I often have trouble getting J seats on SN's BRUKGL and KGLEBBBRU

See and this is just it. JNB would completely route Emirates. Nobody is going to spend 25-40 hours in transit when they can do it in 16 nonstop. It would also put the wash to KLMs traffic to the region from Canada.

...as well as QR and SN.

I'm going to JNB on paid business class for work first week of January. Did it last year too, would be nice if a non stop opened up, lots of companies pay paid J on this route.

... They also have *lots* leaving the fleet.... (ie, rouge)

Not anywhere near as many as they have coming.

Air Canada has 11 planes coming in 2016 and they're not going to sit around and do nothing. 2 777s and 9 7879s. DBX and DEL are going to run on the 3 7879s they're getting next year...

Adding JNB and NBO in 2016 wouldn't be a problem. There will be at minimum 5 new destinations or routes pop up. Because thats how many you can run with 11 aircraft. Factor in that most routes start 3/4 times a week and boom could be as many as 10 new routes. And they're typically announced 12 months out.

I am sure there will be some surprises nobody saw coming. Jan-March is a weak time to start routes to most places. It would be a good time to start to Australia and South Africa.

Having done JFK-JNB three times in the last three years the prospect of YYZ-JNB creates a personal dilemma. It means having to decide on the convenience of leaving from Toronto and a 15-16 hour flight in a pod with typical AC food and service versus SAA business class with a nicer lie flat bed, better food and most excellent South African wines and port.

Still 21 old, less efficient 767s current in the fleet.

You gotta figure they will be replacing a bunch of routes with 787s. Making them suddenly cheaper to operate at current yield, all while offering additional seats at little or no additional cost.

Australia will require a new bilateral.

New Zealand is a growth market, and AC has bilateral authority to serve AKL any time, and would code share with Air New Zealand.

On another board, there is a view from veteran pilots that Toronto-Vancouver-Mumbai is on the front burner in the planning department, and will furnish such a surprise (to us outside the airline). Vancouver-Mumbai is actually a shorter distance than Toronto-Mumbai (by 80 nautical miles).

There is at least one more China route coming because of the agreement with Air China - the latter probably does YUL-PEk, codeshared by AC, while AC launches a route to Guangzhou or from Calgary to China, codeshared by Air China.

Interesting.

I'd be surprised w/ a YVRBOM routing but vet pilots surely know more. Also don't see any additional YYC-Asia lift on AC.

OTOH, an additional YVR-China announcement and YULPEK seem like gimmies at this point

Well AC matched the sale. Or did AC start the sale.? Last week AC was the low priced option $3300 in business class to JNB and KLM was much higher.

At $50 fuel i am not sure how inefficient 767's really are. :)
someone posted the cost of an OLD 320 vs new 320n and at $50 oil it made very little sense to buy a new 320n.

However that being said AC has got new 787 on order and they cant cancel.
perhaps just not exercise options on any more.
SO if AC can find customers willing to fly Rouge the economics have just improved at $50 fuel vs more efficient planes. I suspect in part due to the very low value of 767's

Indeed. Economies in terms are fuel are lower, but they are still present. Also, the 767s are getting really old so maintenance must be an issue too. As you say, they have to take them so they'll be on the books.

I do believe that most of next years' 787 will be replacing existing routes.

AC claimed that the 788's CASM is 29% below their 763's with 191 seats. Assuming this is correct, it likely means the CASM on the 788 is actually higher than the rouge 763 with 280 seats.

If fuel were higher I'd agree 787s should be replacing routes... but 763s are quite economical with oil at current prices. Seems like now is the time for trying out some new long haul routes with 787s.

The lease rates of 787s are pretty scary, I imagine AC's financing terms aren't too different (except they'll own the planes in 10 years or whatever it is), but leasing is about $1M USD/month. A 763, particularly AC's vintage ones, are around $200,000.

$800,000 pays for a lot of fuel and maintenance... it may not be a slam-dunk replacing 211 seats with a 251 seat 788 if the capacity isn't truly needed.

But my understanding is that you're right about maintenance and overall reliability on the 763s is deteriorating.

From: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...orming-405814/

"After taking delivery of its first two General Electric GEnx-1B-powered 787-8s earlier this year, chief executive Calin Rovinescu told analysts that he expects the aircraft to yield 29% lower unit seat-mile cost than the 191-seat 767-300s that are being replaced. In a second-quarter earnings call, Rovinescu cited the example of the Toronto-Tel Aviv route, on which a 251-seat 787-8 can carry 31% more passengers and more than triple the cargo while burning 3% less fuel per trip than the 767."

I read that a fully loaded 787 uses 3% less fuel than a fully loaded 767 on this route. One can assume that even with 191 passengers and ⅓ the cargo it would require even less fuel for that flight.

Technically, they could sell those 60 seats at deep deep discounts and still make more money than operating a 767.

Agreed.
Carriers who came in late to the 787 game - after frame price increases, long after deep discounts from B were common - I would imagine the oil plunge has actually turned their expected benefit upside down. The long owned 767/330 might actually generate more profit on a per seat basis than the shiny 787, all costs/revenue considered.
Wonder if a prolonged oil softness might lead to new aircraft deferrals? ... Time for AC to dust off their 747s and L1011s ...

AC doesn't actually have planes that they could use sitting in the desert... right?

I'm recall reading that they have three 747s in storage.

Now how much it would cost to bring them back to useable condition...

They could slap ~600 seats in them (its been done) and call it HD, present it as an enhancement, and would make the refurb money back in no time :cool:

Don't give Rouge ideas :p

No, they are long since gone. The last 3 747-433's (fins 341-3)were combi's and were unique in having a special firewall between the cargo and passenger areas, and seperate air handling/ HAVC systems making them heavier than standard, and something of an orphan. There were returned to the Lessor in 2004. Latest I could see 342 was in the Dubai Air Wing, 343 is Saudi Arabian Cargo and 341 is with MyCargo.

The ex Canadian 747-475's (fin 381-2, 384-385) are scattered. 381 is re-registered N278AW, 382 is retired, 384 returned to lessor in 2002, 385 RTL in 2003. Looks like 381,382,384 went to Argentina and 385 went to Philippine Airlines.

TAM would probably make AC a sweet deal to take back the A345's.

Only FIN 384 could theoretically be put back into service, according to atdb.aero all others have already been part-out.

In some cases while starting new rouge routes. 6 767s were coming off lease in 2016 and being retired. Were being the key word. AC told investors in the Q3 report it has renewed the leases. Retirements of 767s are on hold for growth.

Really it will be much like this year. 767s were replaced by 87s come the fall so they could be converted to join rouge. Put another way 58 mainline wide bodies at this year end, 59 at next year end, 70 the following. Or 64 including rouge, 71 including rouge and 86 including rouge.

When this whole rouge/growth project started they had 54. Its a growth rate of about 50% from 2013 to end 2016 in international seats... Dubai Delhi fun takes 3 Aircraft... to put it in perspective.

Either way the addition of routes and frequencies means they no longer are buying enough 787s to actually replace all of the 767s. They still have 29 of them... Sure they went to rouge but they added new routes...

This article is suggesting that SAA could be thinking of adding a YYZ route.

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-s...ng-champagne-c

I'm not overly familiar w/ TAM ops, Why do you say this?
For SYD/Australia, I presume?

I remember years ago being on one of those from YYZ-LHR. You could go into the cargo area from the passenger area (if you had the key to the door, of course). Before take off the FAs invited a bunch of the kids on the flight to go back there and meet the horses that they were transporting to Europe. My son, who was about 7 at the time I think, was very impressed.

(Sorry about the thread creep - it's a nice memory of when flying was fun)

I think he's wondering if AC would ask to take back the A345s TAM presumably has sitting in storage (unfinished lease term? AC still owns them). I believe the poster was referring to AC once again operating them which IMHO has statistically no chance of happening. I don't think those A345s will fly for another airline ever again.

Ahh, OK. Re-read the post. Makes sense now.

AC might reacquire and deploy their old A345s on the routes too far for their yet-to-be ordered A380s .....

"One proposal is to move a London flight to Abu Dhabi to help reduce an annual loss of 300 million rand on the U.K. route and take advantage of rising demand for Gulf destinations, the presentation shows. Flights to Beijing, which is its biggest loss-making route, could be canceled and a route to Toronto started instead, the document shows. SAA said last week it would start a new Abu Dhabi route on March 29 in partnership with Etihad."

So this is interesting. Beijing is currently served by the A340-600 on SAA. The aircraft range would be there for JNB-YYZ but would it actually be profitable with so much capacity, weight and higher fuel consumption?

Hard to understand how London and Beijing could be loss leaders, yet YYZ would be profitable.

Only thing I can think of is London has lots of flights a day, plus additional flights to Europe. PEK maybe Emirites does better on the route than SAA direct?

YYZ would be a fairly captive market, I go there once a year and am allowed to fly J on company dime as do most in my industry. But any carrier is going to have a tough time with ultRa Long hauls unless feeding a large hub - something SAA doesn't really have compared to Europe, me3.

It might just have the range to go YYZ-JNB, but I suspect a technical stop would be required to fly JNB-YYZ.

Itll work approximately until AC comes along with the 789 and runs them off the route.

Or put another way...No dilemma at all. SAA would seem to be the preferred option.

Even though the SAA food, offerings and service is fantastic, I'd rather fly YYZ-LHR-JNB instead of YYZ-IAD/JFK-JNB because:-

1) You can earn more AC AQM, which is now required to maintain status (50% minimum requirement). If you go from IAD/JFK you lose a huge chunk of AC miles as the majority of miles from your trip would be SA miles.

2) Skip the border - no need to go through the US border. Big selling point. It's a reason why I don't want to fly via Atlanta on Delta or any US city.

3) Opportunity to exit the airport at LHR and meet people for lunch, etc.

Also I prefer AC's new 787 pods vs. SA's business class seats. However, SA business class seats are better than AC's old pods.

1) Not surprised that London is a loss leader for SAA due to the huge competition on LHR-JNB route, which has more seats than LHR-YYZ!

Just looking at direct flights between LHR and JNB (BA, VS and SA):
BA A380 : 469
BA B747 : 345
VS A346 : 316
SA A343 : 254
SA A332 : 222
Total daily seats (direct) : 1606

And as a comparison, LHR and YYZ (BA and AC only):
BA B788 : 214
BA B777 : 224
AC B767 : 211
AC A333 : 265
AC B773 : 349
AC B788 : 251
Total daily seats (direct) 1514

Simply a lot of competition.

2) I heard PEK was losing money because they got a bad time/ landing slot which basically misses the majority of the connections. The flight from JNB to PEK (SA288) arrives at 5:05PM in PEK.... so they lose morning and afternoon connections already.

Depends on the season and likely specific days. Not sure VS provides huge competition either... overall 5 flights vs. YYZ's 6-7.

June 10 (my random choice)
LHR-JNB
SA 332 - 222
SA 332 - 222
BA 380 - 469
BA 744 - 345
VS 346 - 316
Total n/s seats = 1574

YYZ-LHR
BA 788 - 214
BA 744 - 345
AC 763 - 211
AC 77W - 349
AC 77W - 349
AC 77W - 349
Total n/s seats = 1817

(BA operates a 3rd YYZLHR 777 frequency some days bringing it up to 2041 seats)

If LHR-JNB was such a loss making flight for SA... what's the point of having 2 flights departing within 2 hours of each other? Not much connection benefit there.

The other best option would be TK !
Now why would you take AC over say TK, SA or even LH?