freakinflyer001

Really need someone to enlighten me here...

If and when the bilateral agreement are changed, what are the chances of Cathay sending the 77W to Australia? SYD is a largely premium market and could support a daily 77H.

Many thanks

JClasstraveller

No need.

Don't need F - QF is getting rid of it too.

33G already has 39 J seats. 77H has 53. If you can't fill them, then because of the similarity of the Y cabin sizes (175Y vs 182Y), then the far higher trip costs on a 77W will lead to less profitability.

CX is retrofitting some 33G's with reduced W cabins. The 77H 40W cabin will be almost twice the size of the 33G's new W cabin (21W).

In short, the 33G is sufficient. Will 14J seats pay for the added trip costs? CX has probably done the sums and decided not.

QRC3288

I'm not sure this statement is correct? Any idea what is the opportunity cost of pulling a 77H frame away from premium markets like JFK, LAX and LHR? Not to mention, CX has a monopoly on JFK and LAX routing to HKG. I remember hearing that F yield was pretty bad when CX finally canned F service to SYD many years back.

Further, the economics of the 33G make it well suited for the OZ market and its size means CX can offer enough frequency for business-minded travelers, not to mention Cirrus J is really great premium product. It's miles ahead of the two-generations-ago J that used to serve SYD via CX's 747 (the slanty beds), and it's not too far behind in terms of comfort the old CX F hard product.

Lastly, as the poster above says - 77H only introduces more J and PEY seating, which would put even more pressure on OZ yields. Anecdotally, I fly CX's network pretty much everywhere from a HK base. Emphasis on North America. I breath a sigh of relief looking at J fares HKG-SYD, versus say HKG-USA. You're generally looking at 2-2.5x the price for a J seat to the US than you are to Sydney, for a flight that is perhaps 1.25-1.75x the length. Presuming you can get a similar load factor, the yield to the US makes more sense to keep the 77H on those markets and keep 33G running to Australia.

All in I just don't see SYD taking a 77H frame.

freakinflyer001

What if we look at capacity? Again if bilateral permits, could they not send replace one of the SYD 333 flights with a 77G? The 77G has far less premium seats than the 77H but has almost 100 more seats than the 33G. With CX opening 2 new European routes in the near future, it would make sense for them to want to pick up more passengers from oz and feed onto those new flights.

QRC3288

i think IF 77W was to appear on SYD, it would be 77G like you bring up here.

still, the 77G frames are few and far between right now (I think ~11?)...aka there are no free planes. EWR, YYZ, the select LHR and soon ORD and SFO second flights, European destinations, etc. I don't know the rotation but it just doesn't seem like there are any spare frames and OZ is already well served, and yields aren't that high to begin with.

I guess if talking about 77G the question is changed a bit from "is OZ a large premium market" (compared to 77H destinations in North America, no), to "does OZ have enough Y capacity" (I'm not sure). If the latter no doubt 77G is a decent fit but I wonder what the opportunity cost is given those planes are needed on North America/Europe routes.

Guy Betsy

The Australian routes are essentially too short in distance to justify putting a 77W aircraft. That's what the Airbus aircrafts are for.

derek2010

I think CX should use 4-class 77W to serve Australia, as the flights are code-sharing with BA, QR, AY. The 77W can accommodate more pax.

brunos

Let me reiterate what Guy Betsy said.
A330 are perfect planes for such 8 hours routes from an aircraft economics viewpoint. It would make little economic sense to use a 777-300ER for such a short route.

fakecd

aint gonna happen. simple reason, they wud require maintenance crew and spare parts and 2 types of back up crew if they introduced 77w.. granted they fly cargo747 i think but probably maintenance etc are outsources.to qantas.

whilst i do not disagree demand for syd routes are rediculous the yield might not be too high (thanks to guy like me who fly tpe I fare... commute route with cx138 sunday night fits perfectly)

if seats r full what cx.shud do is up the prx... many guys r switching ftom MH to cx for oz routes... just jack up the prx for god sake... get chinaman to fly domestic career... yield goes up availability improves..

Flyingfox

English please.

It takes too long to decipher the jibberish that you've written. At least make an effort.

fakecd

I thought my english were clear enough but here's for the less sharp crowd reader's digest:

1) to have 77W serving Australia route that's exclusively served by 33G, CX would require a new set of maintenance crew that's qualified for 77W, spare parts, training etc that's based in OZ. That's dead cost on CX.

2) I agree with OP that 77W for Australia because 33G are always full. But I am making a point that "full flight" do not neccessarily make a "profitable" flight. Thus my comment about yield. I don't have a firm data but it seems ex TPE, ex SGN, and ex-MNL flight to SYD constitute a meaningful sum of J cabin paying 50% less than what a ex-HK J would cost. Discussed many times..

3) so if CX has problem that flights are always full, they can increase ticket prices to discourage the marginal consumer at lower part of the curve - this increases (maybe) yield (i.e. profit margin, in plain english) and increases availability for those willing to pay the fare

4) following original MH disaster i've heard anactodal evidiences from both local Australian reservation agenst and airport staff, that people who used to fly on MH are all switching to CX. I do not have scientific evidences to confirm this but make sense for same ONEWORLD group, i.e. CX to pick up the demand of people no longer willing to fly MH.

5) or cheap CX fares offered in Mainland china as feeder traffic from domestic china to Australia. I doubt these tickets are that profitable... so make them more expensive... marginal consumer will drop out of CX and fly China Eastern or whatever CH domestic career that flys to Australia.

Q.E.D.

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

SQ is happy to put 773s on flights to Australia, and A380s on a select few. Connecting F class traffic I guess.

QRC3288

To elaborate on fakecd's logical points; CX should raise pricing on OZ flights before you see introduction of 77W. Premium prices to Australia - esp since many Australia seats are transit pax, in discounted I and D from outports - are not expensive compared to other places in the CX network. Australia J class fares (even those ex-HKG) are much better "deals" for long-haul hours flown/$ than USA ports like JFK, LAX etc, which are served by the 77W.

The back-end translation is that yields need to be higher to Australia to justify the bigger frame.

Pricing - and hence, yield - is an excellent predictor if more capacity is needed. Sometimes there are other competitive factors as well, like SQ facing down EK (which I post below).

QRC3288

I think a more likely explanation is that SQ has been decimated by EK, and SQ is doing whatever it can to compete...even if the yields themselves don't justify it. EK offers a high end premium product to Australia and connects to far more cities in Europe...so SQ better at least give what it can. Before the days of the Middle Eastern carriers, SQ's bread and butter was premium connecting traffic Europe to Australia. EK is just crushing them with the bazillion A380s EK flies around, all with F class. SQ cannot give up this fight, even though I can't imagine the yields are great. The real beneficiaries are Australian passengers who probably are getting far more premium service at cheaper prices than what long-term market dynamics call for. Definitely not bad at all for the customers! CX doesn't quite face this predicament, and hence serves Australia with yield in mind. I recall years ago SYD F yields being dreadful.

SQ executives are frank about needing to go head to head against EK even short-term profitability of a route be damned.

JClasstraveller

Barely.

And in Y after the 33G's have been reconfigured to 39J/21W/191Y, there will be less Y seats on the 77H.

The only market that is being lost is F really. If SYD required F, they would have kept it.

J yields are ridiculously good - CX often charges $AUD5K for SYD-HKG in J. Y yields aren't as good due to increasing numbers of people willing to fly via KUL, SIN, MNL, TPE, etc.

The problem is even if you put a 77H with 53J on SYD-HKG, then you have a W demand that can't fill 28W seats per flight and you have a plane that's got 40W and a plane whose trip costs are far higher than a 333.

Put simply, it doesn't make sense economically.