Qantas earns well over AUD 32,000 an hour flying Melbourne-Sydney, according to flight schedule experts OAG, making the air route the world’s top revenue generator – except for one.
A list of the top 10 air routes in the world, arranged by OAG in order of the revenue they produce, says that Qantas earned an average hourly rate of USD 24,237 (AUD 32,850) flying between Melbourne and Sydney, operating the route for 35,264 hours between April 2017 and March 2018.
OAG, which combined its flight schedules and traffic data to create the list, points out that all the top 10 routes are also high-cost operations, combining generally wide-bodied services with high frequency. In the case of MEL-SYD, Qantas operates about 65 flights a day on just that one route.
“Typically, these routes also include a high proportion of business traffic, later booking and higher yielding in nature,” says OAG’s John Grant.
“Whilst the cost of operating may be high, at least the revenues are likely to be even higher!”
The total revenue Qantas earned on the MEL-SYD route between April 2017 and March 2018 was USD 854,692,402, according to OAG. When converted to AUD, that breaks the billion-dollar mark, coming in at about AUD 1.16 billion.
Globally, only one route breaks the billion-dollar threshold in US dollars – and that’s the British Airways LHR–JFK service, which accounted for about 6% of BA’s total revenue in 2017. It’s the world’s most lucrative route. It also happens to be the only route that the supersonic Concorde, BA’s former flagship, could operate profitably.
On an hourly basis, the USD 1,037,724,867 BA earned on annually on LHR–JFK equates to USD 24,639, which narrowly beats the Qantas hourly rate for Sydney-Melbourne and yet, amazingly, is still not quite the highest hourly earner. That accolade goes to the Emirates LHR-DXB service, which earned the Dubai-based carrier USD 25,308 an hour in the year concerned. The Heathrow-Dubai route ranks third in OAG’s Top 10.
Incredibly, five of the top 10 revenue earners are either to or from London Heathrow, which Grant says may explain the ongoing debate about Heathrow’s third runway, with the increased competition damaging those lucrative earners. (British MPs last month voted overwhelmingly in favour of a third runway for Heathrow.)
“And in the same vein perhaps the OneWorld Alliance needs to find a sub-brand for its Heathrow services since three of the world’s top 10 revenue generators share Heathrow in common,” Grant says.
The Top 10 routes, in order of total revenue generation, are:
British Airways JFK-LHR
Qantas Airways MEL-SYD
Emirates LHR-DXB
Singapore Airlines LHR-SIN
American Airlines LAX-JFK
United Airlines SFO-EWR
Cathay Pacific HKG-LHR
Qatar Airways LHR-DOH
Air Canada YVR-YYZ
Written by Peter Needham
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