Will QAN survive?, page-1978

Two weeks prior to Christmas, in 'normal' times the airlines' domestic Australian capacity would be stretched.

Its international flights would also be chock-a-block out of Australia, and given the cricket roping in Poms and the desire of many Europeans to escape their winter for a Christmas by the beach with a cold one, inbound flights also quite busy.

QAN's Airbus A330s are one of its larger fleets, variously configured for domestic or international use.

Yet some remain way underutilsed. The ones discussed below typically have 28 business class and 243 economy class seats, so QAN must have worked out that it cannot consistently find sufficient passengers to make it worthwhile operating these larger than Boeing 737-800 planes. Pre-COVID-19, one would find these A330s on domestic routes such as Melbourne to SYD and across to PER.

Registration number VH-EBA did a freight/mail flight from Brisbane to Sydney on Friday 10 December, but wasn't used yesterday and nor so far today.

EBB and EBD haven't flown any sectors in the last seven days. EBC did a freight/mail flight one way also Brisbane to Sydney on Tuesday 7, but hasn't turned a revenue wheel since. EBE has been better used, but on two recent days it only did one flight SYD to Perth or vice versa. EBF has not been used for the past three and a half days (and no sign yet of it flying anywhere this afternoon). EBG today is seeing its third day without a flight (so far). EBH has not flown in the past seven days.

As PgsMightFly opined, it's sensible to keep aircraft on the ground if there's insufficient demand but at US$3000 a month for the required maintenance (one can't just stable them on an aircraft apron without constant checks and attention), it rapidly becomes a significant cost if many sit idle for months.

With journalists at the mainstream media salivating at being 'invited' by QAN to whatever, generally these hacks won't tell the community about idle aircraft. This leads to many millennials concentrating on 'the iconic Qantas' as some sort of 'god' whose shares 'never decrease' but ignoring its huge financial problems.