@johan rebel:

European carriers were indeed heavily government controlled and built up. Without that, they were much smaller or did not even exist anymore. That fate got SN, UT (now part of AF), OA.
But currently all airlines are still strongly subsidized, but that is another discussion. Air tickets do not have sales tax and fuel is not taxed by excise as well, like car gasoline.

@cityflyer369: You are talking about AMS-PER or DRW, but those are the least interesting Oz destinations. Probably you mean SYD and MEL.

Indeed, very long flights of > 14 hours cost even more fuel as the aircraft has to carry lots of fuel, so a stop would be more feasible, even to passenger's comfort. An extra stop costs 2 hours more, but saves on crew (a very long flight requires also two sets of crew, i.e. 2x2 pilots, 2x10 FA/ pursers), more toilet and food waste storage.
I think such flights are more done for prestige reasons, like SQ21 SIN-EWR which was discontinued in 2013, but SQ considers restarting it with an A350, F/C only.
I think the QR nonstop DOH-AKL of 18 hours won't get profitable, but more a kind of "We have the longest nonstop flight".
For the same reason a nonstop LHR-SYD will never be there, despite there are aircraft (777LR, 787-9, 350-10) capable doing this.

 

No, I believe that PER or DRW were intended.

LHR-PER is just about technically feasible with a fully loaded current aircraft - so AMS-PER would also be feasible.

SYD or MEL are, however, too far for any current aircraft, unless it was severely payload restricted (Qantas did once fly a 747 from LHR to SYD, non-stop, but with no paying pax, and only a handful of staff and pax on board - http://www.airwaysmuseum.com/Qantas%...top%201989.htm). Therefore, a non-stop service from Northern Europe to the East Coast of Australia just isn't possible for the time being - the plane would have to be half-empty or less, and carrying little or no cargo, and would still be operating at the very limit of what was possible. This just is not commercially feasible.

It's not even possible from IST at the moment.

 

I believe that kind of routing - desirable to get pax to but a lot of problems standing in the way of an efficient operation - is exactly what alliances are meant to deliver.

 

Exactly. :-)
I was replying to a poster who mentioned that QF was considering LON-PER and discussed whether it would be reasonable for KLAF to offer non-stop flights to Oz, and for this PER and DRW in conjunction with intra-Oz codeshares are currently the only reasonable options.

One-stop flights AMS-Oz are a different topic, and of course for such an approach the problems are:
- crew costs
- still 3-segments flights except for the final destination (SYD or MEL)
- additional flight times for everybody not going to SYD or MEL
- the additional inconvenience of having a stop (in SE Asia, for example).

 

A nonstop flight costs extra crew as there should be 2 sets of crew onboard while a flight AMS-SIN-(PER|SYD|MEL) requires 1 set of crew each leg and can stay in a hotel overnight in SIN and fly back on duty or further onward to Oz.

 

But a non-stop flight completely avoids the costs of having an extra crew base in the stopover city; better to have that second crew onboard and working, rather than sleeping in expensive hotels in Singapore (or wherever). Maintaining a crew base in both Singapore and Sydney would be far more expensive.

That a sector is so long that it needs reserve crew is *not* the dealbreaker. No matter how KLM decided to set up a new Australian route, it is difficult to see how they could make it a more compelling (and profitable) proposition than their current partnerships with multiple airlines, who bring passengers from a range of Australian cities to several of KLM's Asian destinations.

 

Who would want to be on an AF/KL flight that long....

 

... 9 abreast in a 787

 

Just to put it on the record here: KLM flew to Sydney for the first time in 20 years, as the first of two repatriation flights landed on Saturday.

https://www.upinthesky.nl/2020/04/05...aar-amsterdam/