Kangaroo Route

In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
Published 31 Aug 2000

The Super Constellations took three days to reach London and lacked the power or range to dodge most storms. When monsoons or cyclones were encountered, the pilots had no choice but to put on the seat belt signs and bounce through them. Even in normal conditions they flew at a height guaranteed to produce more or less constant turbulence. (Qantas called it, without evident irony, the Kangaroo Route.) It was, by any modern measure, an ordeal. So for nearly every immigrant throughout the 1950s, a trip to Australia meant a five-week sea cruise. Even now, of course, when you must allow yourself to be sealed into a winged canister for a full day in order to get there, Australia feels a long way away.

Aerotropolis
by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Published 2 Jan 2009

While His Highness spent $500 million on a new concourse at Dubai International and $650 million more on the spinnaker-shaped, skyline-defining Burj Al Arab, Clark and Flanagan acquired a handful of new 777s, twin-engine long-haul jumbo jets that fly farther on less fuel than 747s. Armed with these state-of-the-art aircraft, Emirates made it its mission to rewire the world’s paths from Point A to Point B. After it broke into Australia, for example, it pounced on the lucrative “kangaroo routes” linking the Antipodes to London. The cities are far enough apart that no aircraft can make it on a regular tank. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t lay over in Dubai, especially if Emirates could use its hub to lower costs and offer lower fares. This insight had enormous ramifications for strategy; any flight between two cities in the East and West that didn’t warrant its own nonstop—Milan-to-Tokyo, or Frankfurt-to-Bangkok—could connect via Dubai as easily as anywhere else, and should.