(Date Posted:10/06/2007 6:29 AM)
... A330s are Air Asia X planes. The only one delivered until now is scheduled to fly to Gold Cost (Australia), so it is possible that they also use it to Bangladesh, as it's a relatively short route.
The route's slightly shorter than KL-Shenzhen (see map)
So long term it sounds like it would make sense
a) to use an A320 &
b) allocate it to AA rather than AAX
But short term, if AAX's A330 is only flying to Brisbane four times a week, perhaps it's just a way of using the plane the rest of the time?
With an A330's 6000-odd mile range, there'd be no need for refueling in Bangladesh, so I imagine the turnaround there would be quick & perhaps cheaper? (eg if fuel is more expensive in Bangladesh... but I have no idea what other maintenance is needed between flights, or how airports charge for it, so this is a bit speculative.)
Allocation of longer routes between AA & AAX doesn't seem to be complete. (see this thread).
I'd guess the implications for AAX's "profitability"* could be partly behind this: if routes with lower load factors are allocated to AA, any losses will be diluted. But with only a few routes, AAX would be much more like to report overall losses if it's allocated a few routes that turn out bad.
*I've double-quoted "profitability" because I think it'll be very hard to define for AAX. In a recent interview the CEO mentioned that AAX will have very low fixed costs - pretty much everything'll be leased from AA. So it's profitability will depend heavily on what AA charges. Without a lot of detailed information it'd be difficult to assess how fair these charges are & whether for example AAX would be profitable if it had to buy its own planes &/ run its own online bookings &/ do its own advertising...
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生活真的太复杂了!
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