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Originally Posted by trofirhen
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Good news, interesting news. Thanks.
Do you think that an ensemble of flights from Vancouver to Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane is eventually possible? I'd love to see YVR extend its market footprint, and this is one part of the world where we may have an edge. I'd be interested in hearing your views on this. 
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10 years, probably.
Canadian passports presented at passport control at Tullamarine (MEL) keep rising y/y and they're either flying on a US or AU airline via SFO/LAX, via AKL on NZ or via SYD on AC's service - that's the market that will be gobbled up when/if a non-stop service starts.
Brisbane would be more of an expensive snowbird destination for Canadians, although there'd definitely be a fair amount of people who wanted to head to the Rockies from this end.
Melbourne would have double the amount of high-yielding passengers than Brisbane (whether they're bound for Vancouver, who knows - probably more Toronto) and it would be much easier to fill business class if Melbourne were started first.
If the bilateral were changed, Brisbane would be a prime candidate for the AC Rouge brand and AC mainline to Melbourne as well as the current Sydney service. AC's 767-300ERs that are going to AC Rouge are just beyond the range of YVR-BNE (6300nm as opposed to a 5900nm range on the plane) and would require a stop in HNL/NAN - might work for a "leisure" carrier, but it would be shunned for mainline (AC mainline used to do YVR-HNL-SYD and for a while they did YVR-HNL-MEL with 767-300ERs just before Sept. 11th, dropped soon after - 77Ls/77Ws allowed them to remove HNL and just fly direct).
Starting Melbourne 3x a week non-stop would be a good start: it only requires one 77L (or 789) - dep YVR Tues Thur, Sat, dep MEL Mon, Wed, Fri etc - it won't cannibalise the yields on the YVR-SYD flight as much if they started daily and allows them to exploit a market that needs to grow as flights are ramped up to daily.