Qantas and turn arounds

Whilst visiting San Francisco last week i noticed that the qantas flight was parked at a remote stand with no trucks around it. I have also noticed this at LAX, the a/c seem to stay on the remote stand for a while and then move to a gate.

My question to the v-flyer bots is why do they not have a quick turnaround?

The timings are based around offering the biggest window for connecting flights at both ends... Typically, QF have their a/c parked at LAX and SFO for 10-12 hours before they make their return trip over the Pacific.

If QF turned their a/c around in LAX and SFO within 3 hours, the flight would get back to Australia late in the evening ruling out any chance of connecting onto any other Australian cities during the same day. All passengers would have to spend the night in a hotel before completing the rest of their journey the following day.

Parking the a/c on the ground in the US until the evening also allows the biggest window for connecting passengers from other areas of US to make a same day connection to Australia.

It does make good sense even though you would think that QF could be doing more with the a/c useage/cycles to maximize revenue...

Do QF use this time to give the aircraft a good clean? I've always found their 744's in good condition.

[Scrooge]

It depends.

QF also send their aircraft on a SYD - LAX - JFK - LAX - SYD route.

Though yes most do just sit at LAX/SFO and enjoy the sunshine.

Also there is the problem of SYD closing, if they were to do a quick turn and the flight for some reason was delayed they would end up having to hold the flight for x number of hours.

NZ also work like this I believe.

At one point the QF aircraft which lays over in SFO was being used to run a "tag on" flight to YVR. Though I suspect if it involved passing through US Immigration, even when connecting, it wasn't too popular.

They stopped this some time in August from what I can make out.

It would certainly make sense to use the somewhat enforced downtime of these long stops to carry out intensive cleaning, rectify cabin defects, and generally catch up on things which aren't doable during the more usual short turnaround times.

The only disclaimer is with these being downline locations, the airline probably doesn't have a significant engineering base capable of handling anything other than simple cabin defects, but deep cleaning probably makes good business for companies who perform cabin presentation services.

It would likely also be a good opportunity to perform exterior washes.

Mike