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This six-day-a-week flight from DFW Airport brings in over $400 million a year

International routes generate the most revenue for airlines, even with fewer flights.

That Airbus A380 flight over North Texas six times a week is more than a photo opportunity for plane spotters — it’s bringing in more than $400 million a year for Australian carrier Qantas.

The DFW-to-Sydney flight is the highest-grossing flight from DFW International Airport, according to aviation data firm OAG. It’s one of nine flights that brought in more than a quarter-billion dollars between June 2018 and May of this year. It made $428 million for Qantas during the period.

The data from OAG shows exactly how lucrative those long-haul flights can be to carriers like Qantas and American Airlines. On Monday, American announced it will launch a new nonstop 15-hour flight from DFW Airport to Auckland, New Zealand, in October 2020.

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It’s part of American’s growing strategy to connect U.S. passengers to the rest of the world through DFW.

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Airlines have responded by adding more routes and seats for foreign-bound travelers. International traffic to and from DFW grew 30 percent between 2013 and 2018 to 8.74 million passengers, according to airport statistics.

Routes from DFW Airport to London and Tokyo can bring in as much revenue as flights to more frequent spots such as Los Angeles and Chicago. OAG doesn’t have data for Southwest Airlines, which doesn’t share its fare information as freely.

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“The majority of the top 10 markets undoubtedly meet performance expectations, but it’s important to point out that highest-grossing doesn’t always equal highest profitability in the airline business,” said Will Berchelmann, director at Dallas-based Airline Data Inc. and Volaire Aviation Consulting. " In some situations, flights between an individual city-pair might lose money on a standalone basis, but they operate because of the positive revenue contribution they make to an airline’s network."

That’s the case for Qantas and American, which have a strong partnership and can use that Sydney to Dallas flight to connect passengers to hundreds of destinations in the U.S. and Australia.

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Of course, the Qantas flight to Sydney has some advantages over competitors. First, it’s on an Airbus A380, one of the largest passenger airplanes in the world that can carry about 485 people. That’s nearly triple the passenger load of a 737. It’s also one of the longest nonstop flights in the world, taking 16 hours to fly to the Australian city.

The Qantas flight to the Land Down Under flies brings in about $628,000 per flight, nearly 3 times as much as higher-frequency routes to London Heathrow Airport or Los Angeles International.

American’s DFW-to-Heathrow route was the second-highest-grossing route with $421 million in revenue, but flying almost four times as often as the Sydney flight.

This is the business class cabin in the Qantas A380-800 airplane where passengers can lie...
This is the business class cabin in the Qantas A380-800 airplane where passengers can lie down with plenty of room.(David Woo / Staff Photographer)

High-demand international routes are among the highest-grossing, at least per flight. The DFW-to-London flight brings in about $173,000 on each flight and DFW-to-Tokyo Narita Airport makes $197,000 per trip.

DFW’s most frequent flight, the American Airlines route to Los Angeles, ranked third with $324 million in revenue followed by American’s flight to Miami, with $317 million.

Another American hub in Charlotte was the fifth-highest grossing with $302 million in revenue.

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“The bottom line is that the top-grossing markets are a reflection of the strong DFW hub, which has increasingly added more and more connecting passengers this year as American has expanded to over 900 daily flights,” Berchelmann said.