Australian Business Traveller has reported more inconvenience for travellers using the supposedly fast and convenient Qantas services to the Dallas Fort Worth hub in Texas.

This service looked like a positive addition to the Qantas network to the US when it was launched earlier this year.

But to be convenient it had to be reliable, and had to actually save time over the airline’s Los Angeles connections,  to the middle and eastern states US states, and in particular on the return flights to Sydney, which involve a gratuitous refuelling stop in Brisbane even when everything  else works as intended.

At the moment the additional issues with the DFW flight include the cabin amenity on the 747-400ERs used on the route being inferior to that provided on the Qantas A380s that offer reliable non-stop flights to LAX and connections beyond between both Sydney and Melbourne.

The 744ERs are being refurbished. And they have GE engines, not the troubled Rolls-Royce RB211 units that Qantas in its penny pinching wisdom handed over to an offshore overhaul and modification facility in Hong Kong which has coincided with their increasing unreliability.

When Qantas launched less than daily and variably multi-stop services to DFW it withdrew its full service product from San Francisco, where it is widely understood to be planning to deploy Jetstar A330s via Auckland later this year.

The criticism of the DFW failure to perform  situation is aimed directly at management. For all the bleating about how the carrier can’t make money on its international services, the DFW fiasco suggests it either isn’t trying, or has lost touch with the technical and commercial settings needed to be competitive.

Let’s go to the dot points:

  • DFW takes longer than many of the LAX alternatives on other QF and Virgin/Delta and United services for a range of US destinations
  • It sells an inferior cabin amenity compared to QF A380s to LAX
  • It offers less than daily frequency even when it works, and
  • It is unreliable.