SQ421

Flight landed in Sydney 14 minutes ago.

Flight Tracker shows another departure from Delhi today at 1300 IST heading to MEL and then to SYD. As I'm at SYD for about 6 hours tomorrow, I'll try and catch a glimpse, and maybe some photos!

uastarflyer

They should bring back the royal names for the Dreamliner.

Or better still todays royalty: SRK, Salman, Amitabh, Kareena (I'd ride that one)...

deepakbhatia

^

deepakbhatia

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-...830-2sue8.html Any particular reason why it departed so late from DEL?

UA Fan

Welcome to these quarters Do you have a favorable image of AI?

onlysuites

SpeedFreak

original arrival is 5 something in the morning. i think they wanted to land the first flight at decent time for dignitaries

SQ421

Does anyone know which lounge AI is using in SYD and MEL? My guess is the Air New Zealand ones, but I'm not too certain.

I did manage to take some pictures of the DreamLiner in Sydney over the weekend. Will put them up later today.

SpeedFreak

hearing rumours that this route will probably shift to the 777 sooner rather than later.

oliver2002

With 77L service the economics of the route will go south pretty fast...

deepakvalecha

Why dont they have the dreamliner serve BOM-DEL i dont understand :/ Is it because it is a profitable route anyway and not a bleeding one?

SQ421

Their loads are that good?

SpeedFreak

Load maybe, but I think it's more to do with the fact that the 787 does not have crew bunks for cabin crew and at 12.5 hours of flying time it's a major issue for crew rest. That and I believe there is some payload penalty ex-Australia, but I don't believe that is true.

Did the maths for the 777-200 and -300. If they manage to fill all seats on the -300 they will make some more money, whereas on the -200 there will be a slight hit on earnings compared to the increased fuel cost, but if the 787 is making profits, then at least air India won't make loss on the route on the -200.

However, on the plus side, by offering 777, there will be a first class offering too on the route and maybe by transit traffic they should finally be able to fill all 8 F seats. If they do achieve that, at least there will be some use of the -200 rather than just sitting idle or selling them off.

And in case they manage to separate Sydney and Melbourne in the future and use the 777's on the route, that's utilisation of 4 777's which is pretty cool and the 787 can be used to open more routes.

GuyFromBOM

Of the 14 daily flights on the BOM-DEL sector, they already have 2 flights operated by B777 (International-connectors). More wide-bodies would be nice, but if those were stricly domestic flights, it would lead to under-utilisaton of the aircraft range and if mis-timed, would dump capacity and thus lead to lower load-factor count.

Generally, carriers prefer to provide more flexibility / frequency on trunk routes before up-gauging the aircraft. Thus ensuring that the loads & yeilds remain within-limits. An example is the fact that, BA has no plans to deploy the A380 on the LON-NYC route. Or the 4 daily flights 9W operates on the BOM-DXB-BOM sectors, all of which are operated by the B737.

PVDtoDEL

The biggest value of putting the 777 on Aus is that it would free up 787s to fly elsewhere.