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3 Oct, 2012

How Qantas’ Re-Timed Connection Flights in Asia Will Benefit Consumers

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Melbourne, Au (PRWEB) October 02, 2012 – In its weekly video blog, Business Travel Management goes over important benefits that the Qantas-Emirates partnership will offer to consumers. Aside from the expected benefits of redeeming and earning frequent flyer points across both airlines, BTM also goes over the implications of re-timed flight connections in Asia and schedule times for Qantas flights to London and Dubai.

Re-timed Asian connection flights are going to be a massive advantage. Currently, when passengers fly with Qantas into Singapore or Hong Kong, they arrive at very inconvenient times. They usually arrive too late to get flight connections to anywhere else within Asia.

Qantas will re-time those connection flights so they can better meet, particularly the ones at JetStar’s Singapore base. “You’ll be able to connect onto most places in Asia on the same day. That’s a really big benefit,” said Jake Hower, Business Travel Management’s Managing Director. Passengers will also have access to Emirates’ codeshare flights into Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

An important point will be the schedule times for Qantas flights into London. Right now, their flights over Singapore and Hong Kong depart Australia around mid-afternoon for an arrival into London very early in the morning. “Now that allows you to connect onwards to Europe. But more important for corporate customers visiting London, this allows them to get a full day of work once they’ve landed,” explained Jake Hower.

Hower thinks that Qantas will keep a similar time for their flights over Dubai for two reasons. The first reason is to allow corporate customers to get a full day of work once they’ve landed. The second reason is that Emirates currently have all their flights leaving at late evening.

“I don’t think Qantas will want to compete head on with all of those services. Now what it means is that you’ll be dropping down into Dubai around midnight,” said Mr. Hower. There aren’t many Emirates flights departing in early morning that connect to regional Europe.

Passengers will have a long layover if they’re flying to many of the regional airports which typically have a mid-morning departure from Dubai. This means they’ll have a long layover in Dubai before connecting, or they’ll have to choose an Emirates codeshare flight out of Australia since those have much shorter connection times to regional Europe.