We hate speculation and we really hate speculation surrounding new routes. Many (most) rumours are simply implausible but it’s difficult to convey this to our Armchair CEO Caleb who heard about the new route from his mate down the pub who was told about it by his uncle’s friend who was a pilot for Ansett. As Brandolini’s law teaches us: “ The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. ”
We prefer to follow the data rather than rumours, speculation and 3rd hand accounts. We like to consider the data in an analytic framework to test whether the rumour is plausible and even viable. Call it a smell test, but we can try and use the data to answer some simple questions:
Does the underlying demand or network flows support the potential route?
Is it operationally possible from a fleet availability or aircraft performance perspective?
What is the airline’s history on the route and what have they been saying?
What is the opportunity cost or trade-off?
We can’t always answer all these questions as we often won’t have enough data, but using the framework is a very helpful smell test!
For example, a few months ago there was a rumour that Qantas are planning to start two Brazilian routes, the first during the 2nd half of 2026 with Rio being flown as an extension of the Sydney-Santiago flight on the B787-9, and during the 2nd half of 2027, a non-stop to Sao Paulo on the A350. We immediately discounted the rumour utilising this framework, for example:
In the 2024/25 year, the total Australia-Brazil market was 68,400 inbound passengers, amounting to an average of 187/day (according to ABS data). This is relatively small and compounded by Brazilian point-of-sale bias (ABS data tells us 62% are visitors and only 38% Australian residents). Furthermore, Brazil is covered through Qantas’s codeshare partnership with LATAM with competition from other stopover carriers limited by geography.
Fleet time on the B787-9 is scarce and even precious, and whenever B787-9 time has become available in recent years it’s quickly been applied to Europe (SYD-PER-FCO/CDG) and North America (e.g. SYD-YVR, BNE-LAX and MEL-DFW). Furthermore, the additional block time as an onward leg from Santiago to Rio would require a reorganisation of the schedule adding 11 hours block time.
The 1st A350 is arriving in late 2026 with deployment on non-stop Sydney-London from the start of the NS27 season (end of March 2027). Non-stop Sydney-London will require at least 3 aircraft, and with the 4th A350 expected by end of FY27, it seems unlikely that something like Sydney-Sao Paulo would be flown in 2027 and prioritised over non-stop Sydney-London, Melbourne-London and Sydney/Melbourne-New York. The latter routes are what Qantas have been telling us they’ll be flying.
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