Shame really, the Flights been going for as long as I can remember – with the MEGATOPS. Lets hope some other Asian carrier(s) takes advantage of the capacity.

This is the 23rd year of operations here for them – reckon we’ve done quite well for us to survive that long given that it’s a marginal route (operating 777s non-stop was a beneficial move; whichever replacement aircraft they choose to operate here should aid the performance of the route as well, subject to which airlines take advantage of this frequency reduction).

The obvious candidates who are going to benefit are EK, EY and QR as they all have Australia rights, with EY actually going to codeshare with QF from AUH to Australia. This should allow each carrier to look to increase capacity at a suitable juncture.

Air Asia X would probably see the end of SQ here as they’d be able to offer cheaper fares due lower cost structure. And in the long-term, we have Jetstar to look forward to when their 787s come on stream in the 22nd century.

Malaysian would have been better off instead of going to 744s and not increasing frequency to making their flights daily, although I read that they would have needed passengers to sit on the wings to make MAN profitable (rejigging the 744 into 2 class configuration may have been better for MAN, but perhaps not for their long-haul network).

May also be of interest that Finnair has seen huge increase in passenger numbers routing to Asia (up 150% from both LHR and MAN) – they say it’s quicker to route MAN-HEL-HKG rather than MAN-LHR-HKG.