Oneworld Flights between Australia - US
 

why AA cannot operate flights from US to Australia by AA's aircraft?

They can, and have, they choose not to.

Hope this helps.

Dave

They have the rights ( Australia-US is open skies ) , they have operated on the route at before and both times pulled out after a while presumably because they could not make it work for them financially . They have a strong relationship with their OW partner QF and seem happy to just codeshare on the route .

They don't want to. They are just fine with QF doing it for them.

In my ignorance, can their 772s make it non stop without payload penalties?

AA don't provide that information on their 777 page:

http://www.aa.com/i18n/aboutUs/ourPlanes/boeing777.jsp

This boeing page may assist (ex LAX):

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/777...7_range_la.pdf

Last year NZ ran a SFO-SYD nonstop flight for the Sydney Mardi Gras with a RR powered 772-ER , so the aircraft can make it ... whether it could carry a full payload and whether the AA crews would agree to fly AAs aircraft on the route is another matter ( didn't they screw up AAs application to fly DFW-BJS by refusing to fly sectors over a certain duty time ? ) in any case it seems pretty much academic as AA have shown no enthusiasm to return to Australia for a third ( or would it be fourth ?) try .

And why would they want to? The route is not easy to operate. Lets see how DL and VA will be doing in the medium term.

Add to that they are probably doing very nicely out of the QF codeshare arrangements anyway. (likewise why don't AA operate to HKG either? ... again they probably do nicely out of CX codeshare arrangement I guess).

I'm not sure why they'd need to, given that they are in the only alliance with an Australian based carrier that covers the route.

It may also have something to do with AA's agreement with their pilots union that prevents them flying that distance - supposedly the same reason AA doesn't operate its metal to HKG...