British Airways and Qantas are putting together a plan to jointly operate a handful of long haul services to improve the utilisation of their Boeing 747-400 fleets and reduce aircraft downtime at overseas airports.
The two airlines are both partners in the oneworld alliance, and Qantas is also 25% owned by BA. Each has filed local applications to operate reciprocal wet leases from October on daily services between London and Australia via Los Angeles (LAX) and Johannesburg.
BA officially declines to comment on the arrangement beyond the reasons given in the application, which states that "it is to exploit the scheduling and aircraft utilisation opportunities arising from the BA/Qantas alliance".
It is understood that the plan involves a BA 747-400 operating in each direction between Johannesburg and Perth/Sydney for Qantas as an extension of the BA flight to and from London Heathrow. Meanwhile, Qantas 747-400s would fly both ways between LAX and Heathrow for BA as an extension of the Australian carrier's Sydney-Auckland-LAX flights. It is not yet decided if the flights will be wet-leases or codeshares.
The joint operations would eliminate hours of down time for BA aircraft at LAX and Qantas aircraft in Johannesburg and follows recent plans by the two airlines to restructure services and integrate flights between South East Asia and Australia.
The 747-400 proposal replaces a previous plan that studied the possibility of BA crews operating Qantas 747s from London on high density flights rather than leaving the aircraft idle at Heathrow for long periods (Flight International, 10-16 September, 1997).
Source: Flight International
