Analytic Flying

Why push back?
🔴It's obvious in video that airline staff were speaking about "booking" (booking dot com), yet he speaks as though he booked directly with airline so as to blame them.
🔴It's almost though he played for the setup. Subjective, but it's as if he knew & was expecting it. Contrived? 5/5

🟠 He didn't check or fix it, or maybe he suspected it & thought it would make for a good video!
🟠Ivorians were pissed so told their side → if he was right, then why delete? He hasn't deleted similar critiques after airlines pushed back! Is it a case of "if there's smoke, there's fire"? /4

Some observations:
🟠OTA likely mismatched fare displaying business when it wasn't. This happens with obscure airlines in far off places.
🟠Josh is an expert: he has knowledge & expertise to recognise this. If price is too good to be true, it is too good to be true! /3

🔴Josh claims he bought business ticket & airline staff tried to extort money out of him. Of course he plays the "victim" card!
🔴Ivorians claim his business ticket was actually economy & OTA made an error. He threw a hissy fit & airline upgraded him for free. He was filming & they knew who he was! /2

🚨💥Absolutely wild Josh Cahill story ...

A few weeks ago he posted a scathing critique of Air Côte d'Ivoire, claiming airline & staff scammed him. Following a response from Ivorian Foreign Minister, he quietly deleted it!

TLDR 🧵

Is the Jetstar to Sri Lanka rumour credible? We hate speculation and we really hate speculation surrounding new routes.

✈️ 🇦🇺 🇱🇰 A few weeks ago we saw a rumour circulating on regarding Jetstar starting a new route between Melbourne and Colombo. We typically take a dim view of new route speculation, but this one seems plausible. We decided to take a detailed look:
www.analyticflying.com/p/is-the-jet...

Analytic Flying Capacity Tracker: Australian International Airline Seat Capacity Analytic Flying’s capacity tracking tools track monthly international seat capacity to Australia. The development of the dashboard was motivated by the uneven return of international airline traffic a...

www.analyticflying.com/p/analytic-f...

Virgin’s missing million seats a boon for Jetstar The gap made by the exit of the country’s second-largest airline from many overseas routes has been filled by Qantas’ low-cost carrier, new data shows.

Virgin’s missing million international seats a boon for Jetstar

Thanks to AFR for using our data! Data is available on our updated Capacity Tracker dashboard. Filter data by any combination of airline, city, and country of origin. Link in reply ⬇️
www.afr.com/companies/tr...

Five and a half years! That's what is took Australian international airline capacity to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

Five and a half years! That's what is took Australian international airline capacity to recover what was destroyed in a few weeks by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We take a data driven look at just how things have changed. Who are the winners and losers?

www.analyticflying.com/p/five-and-a...

Chart of the week #26: Australian international airline seat capacity finally reaches its pre-COVID level This morning, BITRE released July 2025’s international aviation data, revealing an important milestone: international airline seat capacity has finally reached its pre-COVID level!

Huge milestone in today's BITRE data release: Australian international airline seat capacity finally reaches its pre-COVID level

www.analyticflying.com/p/chart-of-t...

Dismal prospects for trans-Tasman competition Over the last few months we’ve seen Qantas and Jetstar come out swinging with new routes and capacity increases across its trans-Tasman network.

💥NEW ANALYSIS: Dismal prospects for trans-Tasman competition

A detailed look:
🔴Why Qantas & Jetstar's increasing dominance is bad
🔴Why Air NZ can't respond
🔴Why 5th freedom carriers won't respond
🔴And why Virgin have no incentive to respond

www.analyticflying.com/p/dismal-pro...

Finnair A330-300 (OH-LTU) spotted this weekend in the Qantas Silveroo livery getting ready for delivery as VH-QPL in the coming days.

Credit to Owen Yue Yijia & Jetphotos: jetphotos.com/photo/11832721

Isn't it ironic how Sydney Airport are shifting the narrative about slots? It's as if they read our article from last month:

www.analyticflying.com/p/how-constr...

Scheduling fun & games: Qantas's Las Vegas NRL charters! Last month, Qantas loaded several charter flights from Brisbane and Sydney to Los Vegas in February and March 2026 in support of Rugby League Las Vegas. This annual event is entering its third year in...

✈️🏉💰🇺🇸Scheduling fun & games: Qantas's Las Vegas NRL charters!

We worked out how Qantas are scheduling 8 long haul charters without empty legs!
www.analyticflying.com/p/scheduling...

Qantas's A321 XLR inaugural passenger flights 25 September. Rest of the schedule still to come!

QF645 SYD PER 10.35am 1.35pm
QF650 PER SYD 2.35pm 8.40pm
QF467 SYD MEL 4.20pm 5.55pm
QF484 MEL SYD 6.50pm 8.15pm

EU261: there's no such thing as a free lunch Note: we started working on this piece in December 2024 when there was a lot of discussion regarding the implementation of a flight cancellation and delay compensation scheme in Australia.

The Australian government has launched a consultation into an airline industry ombudsman, excluding EU style compensation!

Our analysis shows how compensation schemes won't reduce cancellations & delays. Instead, airlines will minimise compensation!
www.analyticflying.com/p/eu261-ther...

Why regional jets are misunderstood and why they wouldn't have worked for Bonza A very common comment that you’ll come across when engaging in the popular aviation discourse is that route X to Y will be a good size for **insert type of regional jet**.

🚨NEW: Why regional jets are misunderstood and why they wouldn't have worked for Bonza

Smaller aircraft have a lower "trip cost", but higher costs per seat per kilometer, making it difficult for low cost carriers to use them to sell cheap tickets!

www.analyticflying.com/p/why-region...

That’s all true. Point that I’m making is that it’s easy to just critique Boeing and ignore what Airbus has done over 40 years to put them in a position to overtake Boeing.

Airbus Is About to Eclipse a Record That Boeing Held for Decades In 1981, the year Airbus SE announced it would build a new single-aisle jetliner to take on Boeing Co., the 737 ruled the roost.

Despite a 21 year head start, the 737 is about to be eclipsed by the A320 family in total deliveries. While this seemed unlikely as recently as 2018, is it a disservice to Airbus to frame this as a story about Boeing's failures?
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

No. Pretty consistent over time with the bulk of the costs driven by fuel and leasing (see last tweet regarding fuel relative to revenue). Pricing just too cheap to fill aircraft on very thin routes.

5) Bonza's strategy just wasn't viable, tickets were too cheap relative to costs!

Some costs are controllable but their largest cost (fuel) is exogenous. Despite flying very fuel efficient aircraft, Bonza's fuel bill was 45% of revenue, significantly higher than LCC benchmarks!

4) Bonza said failure due to undercapitalisation but Administrators blamed poor strategic management:
-App only sales too limiting
-Low salaries led to staff shortages
-Prices too low to cover expenses
-Unplanned & expensive wet leases burnt cash
-Inaccurate financial modelling

3) Tim Jordan told Australian Aviation in January 2024 that Bonza was "not so far away" from breaking even & was "well on the way" to profitability in 2024.

In fact losses were widening. Cumulative net loss only flatlined when they started cancelling flights in April!

2) Administrators calculated Bonza's avg fare at $104, 26% lower than market avg $141. Flogging tickets to fill aircraft doesn't mean "model works brilliantly", especially on thin low frequency routes. We disagreed with Bradley Davren, CEO of Bonza's MRO provider at the time.

Air New Zealand getting eaten alive by Qantas Last year we did an analysis of Qantas’s decision to reroute its New York flights through Auckland, replacing their historic Los Angeles-New York tag-on flight.

www.analyticflying.com/p/air-new-ze...

🚨Word on the street is Qantas's 🇦🇺Sydney → 🇳🇿Auckland → 🇺🇸🍎New York increasing to daily for NS26 (currently 5x/week)!

How much longer can/will Air NZ persist? Route building is a noble endeavour but burning money when fleet availability is scarce seems ...

Reminder below:

Just how wacked was Bonza? Each day this week we'll share a finding from our analysis of the report to creditors:

1) Bonza incurred net losses of $134m on revenue of just $115m. That means for every $100 in ticket revenue it cost them $248 to fly!

Yes, you spend a large portion of the flight flying through the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

Just sequencing as the inbound arrival rate is slowed in low visibility ops.

How constrained are Sydney Airport's slots? New insights from Sydney's first public Initial Coordination Report

Just how constrained are Sydney Airport's slots?

It's complicated but insights from Sydney's first public Initial Coordination Report shows it's less constrained than you might have thought! Only 66% of slots are allocated compared to 96% at Heathrow!
www.analyticflying.com/p/how-constr...