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Comment by thewizardofaus | Hacker News Reader

It really surprises me that the Australian domestic flight with Qantas is so high on the list.

Syd-Mel air route is the 2nd busiest in the world, with @55,000 flights/yr.

https://www.statista.com/chart/12598/the-worlds-busiest-air-...

Judging from the chart at the end, it looks like monopolistic price gouging explains it. It's the third-highest revenue per hour of the entire list, but the total hours travelled is fairly low compared to others on the list. Compare the three North American transcontinental flights: half the revenue per hour margins, but far more hours traveled, or simultaneously the lowest-margin and most-travelled routes on the list.

The morning and evening business traffic drives the majority of the profits. You can get to Sydney for ~$100 at the right time of day but I've done MEL-CBR a lot – same direction, not as far – and it's $800 if you want to go at 6:30am and come back at 5pm.

The departures board at the Qantas terminal at 6am is funny. There's a flight to Sydney – a fully loaded 737-800 – every 15 minutes. Over in Jetstar it's the same, Virgin the same.

Not quite Japan levels, where from Haneda to various other cities you can have flights that frequent, but all 777s/787s.

Ohare to one of the nyc airports operates on about a 15 minute schedule. Midway is more like 35 minutes.

I'm not an air expert, but I would guess that they're only including air hours, not taxiing, loading, unloading, etc. On a short-haul, 50k flights per year route, that's going to be a larger %age of each day.

Doesn't surprise me too much. It's a very busy route -- with a smaller selection of both airlines and airports. Plus Qantas is the perrenial corporate airline.

Notice that SFO to Newark makes the list further down. If you summed all Bay Area airports to all New York serving airports. Across all airlines... You might see a closer contest.

They have a virtual monopoly on the corporate market. At the peak times of Monday morning and Friday evening seats can go for A$300-$A400 or more one way for an economy class seat on a 737 for a 55 minute flight.

I think membership of the Qantas club has a lot to do with this, and the fact that it's a Oneworld membership. See my comment in this thread about doing MEL-CBR; I was doing that weekly, got Platinum, and am I loyal to Qantas? Sure as shit I am, I can buy an economy ticket to see my family back in the UK and get access to the international First Class lounges.

Also the fact is that the Business lounge at CBR is practically an extension of the office from 5-7pm. Everyone you know is there.

I wonder how much of their business is a result of QF selectively giving membership to the Chairmans' Lounge? It would surely mean a lot of revenue is steered / kept their way through travel policies.

Do any other airlines have an equivalent to CL? I assume the greater availability of private jets in the US rules it out there.

I don't know, I think the general preferences of a lot of people count for more. I mean, you only have two realistic choices for business: Qantas or Virgin. A friend of mine chose Virgin, for whatever reason, and he tells us their lounges are as nice if not more so than Qantas'... but still he wishes he'd chosen Qantas.

They've got just enough of an edge, plus the whole tie-in to the global Oneworld program. Our company's Chairman is a member of the CL, but AFAIK if I requested a Virgin flight that wouldn't be an issue.

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