Couple of things, Bears. Australian tourists have zero interest in visiting Atlanta. The very small number of Australians who have business to conduct in Atlanta (like, say, Australian Coca-Cola or Westfield execs) can fly to LAX and then connect to ATL.
Westbound ATL-SYD would come in somewhere between 21 and 22 hours, depending on the wind. Even if jet fuel were cheap, that would be a very long flight that would appeal to nobody in the economy section. And since jet fuel is relatively costly, WT's point about the uneconomical nature of ultra-long-haul flights is completely correct. The fuel burned just to carry the huge quantity of fuel to fly over 9,000 miles isn't justified by the fares passengers are willing to pay. More fuel efficient to funnel people into LAX to fly to SYD, where those flights get better fuel economy per passenger mile (because they're shorter flights).
Same reasoning makes the DL buildup to Asia from Seattle look rather smart these days. SEA-Asia are shorter distances than LAX or SFO or the mid-continent super-hubs or the East Coast, and thus burn a lot less fuel. And because SEA is at the extreme northwestern edge of the US, the connections from nearly every US city are logical and efficient (no backtracking or circuity).
MAH4546 has been banging the drum for quite some time that AA will eventually fly MIA-NRT nonstop, and that's one area where I strongly disagree with him. From MIA, there are almost no domestic connections that make any sense, so that flight would have to survive almost solely on MIA O&D plus Caribbean/Latin American connecting traffic. And since it's the longest possible US-Tokyo flight, it will be the most fuel inefficient flight, and thus would have to command the highest average fares. Accordingly, I don't see MIA getting any Asian nonstops unless fuel prices become much lower on a relative basis.
In 1998 and 1999, AMR paid an average of $0.55/gal for jet fuel. Yes, just 55 cents a gallon. In 2012, AMR paid about $3.25/gal. That's almost SIX times more expensive. How much higher was AA's yield or PRASM? Barely higher at all. Fares have stagnated while fuel costs have skyrocketed. Boeing's gamble/prediction that long-thin routes would kill the hub/spoke system were undone by the jump in fuel prices. Airbus' gamble/prediction that airlines would all want super jumbo A380s for their hub/spoke system was also undermined by the huge jump in fuel prices, as airlines have demanded lighter large twin-engined jets like the A350 and 787-10 and have ordered lots of 772s and 773s.
How many 772LRs were ordered? 59, and 10 of those went to DL. It wasn't a big seller. Fuel prices killed it. Or more accurately, radically changed the economics behind it.
