Melbourne Tullamarine Airport

The A380 becomes mainstream, with 103 now in service: which airlines, destinations, stage lengths?

There are 103 A380s in service as of early May-2013. Emirates has 33 and Singapore Airlines has 19, so when assessing network scheduling, these two and their hubs predominate: of the 1,048 weekly A380 flights, 402 are from Emirates alone. Dubai and Singapore airport see the most A380 flights.

But there are some less predictable statistics. The airport to see the most A380 operators is Hong Kong followed by Paris and Los Angeles. The largest A380 destination that is not (yet) an A380-hub is London Heathrow. The UK and USA are the most common A380 destinations after Australia, Singapore and the UAE. Asia, not the Middle East, sees the most A380 flights; South America sees none. Guangzhou-Shanghai Pudong is the shortest A380 route at 1,202km while Los Angeles-Melbourne is the longest at 12,751km. Qantas and Lufthansa have the highest average sector length while Thai Airways is placing the most number of cycles – about two – on its aircraft per day. Qantas and Air France are placing the least (just over one).

Yield pressure for China Southern Airlines as it deploys A380 to Sydney

While China Southern's announcement to serve Sydney from Oct-2013 with the A380 may be good for Australia at large, for China Southern there are limited upsides besides strategic ambition and slowly ending its negative perception from not being able to use the A380 in international markets.

The carrier will replace one A330 Sydney service with the A380, generating a 41% increase in capacity, which will likely make the service loss-making for some time. Sharper increases will occur in the premium cabins, where daily business class seats will rise from 48 to 100 and first class from four to eight.

The increase in capacity will occur in an already over-saturated Australia/NZ-Asia market, which is seeing increased capacity from AirAsia X, Air New Zealand, Emirates, Qantas, Scoot and Singapore Airlines.

Airlines' tangled alliances evolve: British Airways-Cathay Pacific codeshare to Australia - for now

Implications continue to emerge from the Sep-2012 landmark Emirates-Qantas alliance, the latest development being a codeshare covering Australia for British Airways and Cathay Pacific. Although the two are members of the oneworld alliance and at first blush may be considered partners, they had the most minimal of ties, owing to significant competition between them.

That competitive situation still exists but other factors have changed: BA's once deep partner Qantas is now a competitor, aligned with Emirates, and is establishing a Jetstar franchise on Cathay's home turf in Hong Kong. BA and Cathay are united by a common enemy – not the first occasion this reasoning has spawned an alliance – but also other factors. BA has lost its Australian network access and Cathay fits in; meanwhile Cathay will be receptive to feed to sustain its positioning after China Southern and Singapore Airlines have made large capacity increases in Australia.

Alliances are evolving, and this partnership will surely change – or go extinct – as BA becomes more familiar with new oneworld members Malaysia Airlines and Qatar Airways, with whom it will have more in common than it does with Cathay.

Australian domestic airfares tumble as airlines wage a capacity battle

Australian domestic fares have tumbled in the past year as Tiger claws its way back into the market from its grounding in 2011, and Qantas and Virgin Australia continue to slug it out for overall market share.

It is unlikely that the pressure on fares and thus yields will let up in 2013 as Tiger continues to add capacity and Virgin and Qantas, along with Jetstar, stick to their targets to add between 7% and 9% capacity in the first half of the current financial year.

All those extra seats should keep a lid on any fare rises, and if Virgin is given the regulatory green light to take effective control of Tiger Australia, along with the promised investment to expand the LCC, there is a real prospect that fares will reduce even further.

Australia's Jetstar on track to overtake Qantas as larger international carrier

Jetstar Airways is on the cusp of overtaking parent Qantas as the bigger airline by international passenger numbers as the LCC subsidiary continues its relentless growth in both the Australian domestic and international markets.

The latest figures issued by Qantas Group for Nov-2012 show the stark contrast in the fortunes of the two stable brands. Jetstar grew both its domestic demand and capacity in Nov-2012 compared to the same month a year ago, while Qantas mainline demand, excluding QantasLink, was flat on a modest increase in capacity.

The story is even more pronounced on the international routes where Jetstar put in double digit-growth for both measures and Qantas continues to fall away. If the current trend continues, Jetstar could overtake Qantas within six months as the biggest carrier by passengers carried to and from Australia.