[Anonymous]

[Ozavanti]

Apparently time is the new luxury….

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/qantas-unveils-vision-for-the-airport-of-the-future-20091111-i9hp.html

Qantas unveils vision for ‘the airport of the future’
ANDREW HEASLEY
November 11, 2009 – 8:21PM

IN A world first, Australian domestic air travellers will soon check themselves and their bags in electronically rather than face the long queues at manned counters, under a radical vision for the airport of the future unveiled by Qantas yesterday…..

rest of report at

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/qantas-unveils-vision-for-the-airport-of-the-future-20091111-i9hp.html

[Binman62]

Delighted to hear that Qantas recognise that the airport is a major point of pain. My experience however is that Domestic and indeed international travel In Australia, is a pleasurable experience compared with that endured in the USA or more specifically with Qantas at Heathrow. Their operational performance with the A380 is lamentable and made all the worse by the attitude of the BAA and their inability to run an airport.

[Biarritzsurf]

Question: Is the Qantas A380 reliability on QF 31/32 really ‘lamentable’? A review on flightstats.com for this flight shows a high degree of operational reliability. What are the issues here?

[VintageKrug]

Not really “lamentable”; a 96% rate of success isn’t that bad.

But of course, that means little if you are on board the 1 in 20 flights which suffer a glitch.

Statistically that would have to mean a considerably higher number of glitches in early operations by newly adopting airlines.

Good article in FlightGlobal about this issue, acknowdleged by Airbus, which gives some perspective:

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/11/09/334396/a380s-stellar-performance-undermined-by-ongoing-technical-issues-operators.html

[Binman62]

Not sure what statistics you may be looking at on flightstats.com but on this site I found the following ratings for QF31 and QF32 for the period Sep 1st to October 31st

SIN LHR

QF009 (747) “Poor rating”: average delays 39 minutes max delay 146 Minutes. 80% on time

QF31 (A380) “Very Poor rating” average delays 40 minutes max delay 339 Minutes. 68% on time

BA12 and BA 16 On time 88% and 89%

LHR SIN for same period

QF32 (A380) “Very poor rating” average delay 27 minutes and max delay 218 minutes. 67% on time

BA11 and BA15 are 67% and 77% but average delay just 15minutes.

QF10 has on time performance of 85% despite having had a 10 hour delay at some stage during the same period.

Remember also that where equipment changes have taken place (06/11/09) and substitute 747 used, this does not show up on statistics. On the 6th the aircraft ran 14 hours late departing LHR at 0215 but not as QF32 but QF10 so registering a 4 hour delay to that flight number. On Monday 9 Nov it arrived at LHR 5 hours late but left within about 30 minutes of schedule.

I have travelled on this aircraft and like it and Qantas very much. But it has never been less than 3 hours late. Qantas are trying to operate LAX and LHR near daily with just 4 aircraft and it is simply not working.

This is especially so at LHR where the operational performance is additionally hampered by the BAA’s attitude to customer service. (i.e) security closing at 10pm for example when the flight is not departing till 2am. This makes a difficult situation worse.

I have looked at the site suggested by VK and would suggest that when airlines talk of operational teething problems you can bet your bottom dollar that what they really mean is that operational performance is dire and they are beating a path to the door of compensation from Airbus.

Moreover TDR is not a measure of punctuality; it is a measure of technical reliability. Thus a flight delayed in SYD for 12 hours due to an engine change may only have half that delay attributable to TDR. The rest may be due to night movement bans, crew hours or even customer service issues. When it then gets to LHR none of the subsequent delay is measured as technical but as rotational.

Qantas are a good airline but at this time and with this aircraft it is going very badly wrong.

[KeepDiscovering]

Vision of the future? Hardly. Air NZ’s domestic operation adapted this PAX-executed check-in in 2008! Even the artist’s impression that is shown on the quoted report is like what’s happening at AKL domestic.

[Author]

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