Thanks for the reply serfty, after reading the OP I realized that they landed at OOL just before 11pm with the intention of refueling and flying to BNE, as I read the OP, the QF636 crew may have but as there were no refueling staff available at OOL on landing - by the time they got refueled they would have missed the midnight BNE curfew.
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I find the fact that they were denied permission at 11:40pm to take off from OOL more interesting - I would assume its a 10-15min flight to BNE? This would suggest that the "runway maintenence" works are a temporary defacto noise curfew for BNE..... or an admission that BNE airport and/or ATC are unable to vary the timing of or control their construction subcontractors, which is strange as I would have thought that its the air traffic controllers whom are in charge of the airside part of the airport, not the construction contractors.
I know the next time if there is congestion running up to the midnight curfew that every single aircraft in holding patterns may all decide to have a fuel emergency and produce some interesting decisions for BNE ATC and at OOL airports!
There is no curfew at Brisbane. The main runway is NOTAM'd off, 14/32 is available and is used during the hours 1200-0500 local. There is a curfew at OOL, 2300-0600. You can break it at your peril, just like you can break the SY curfew, it will just cost you.
With the runway works at BNE, ATC do NOT have control over the runway once it is NOTAM'd off. They are time critical works and only comes back (if we are lucky) 15 mins before 0500. More than once has the VOZ aircraft from PH held waiting for it to return to service.
Aircraft don't call fuel emergency for no reason. Nor should they wait in a holding pattern knowing they will become fuel critical. The scenario would have been something like this:
you enter the holding pattern with advice that you will hold for 30 mins. That is the holding fuel you are carrying, so everything ok. You get to 27 mins and get told you've been pushed back 10 mins because there are Medical priority aircraft who will come through with no delay and have taken some slots. Suddenly you are beyond limits. You therefore declare fuel critical. This will push you up the order but obviously push others back, which may then push them into the same scenario.
What you cannot do, after been told you will hold for 40 mins and you are only holding fuel for 30, is sit in the holding pattern for 30 mins and then declare fuel critical. Once holding exceeds the published holding fuel, it is alerted to the affected aircraft as a hazard so they can make provision to divert if required to arrange more fuel. I suspect something similar happened to this flight, it was just unfortunate it happened at that time of night. The pilot made the right decision to go somewhere else, I'm sure they were just limited in options, they would not have made SY before curfew, probably not enough fuel to go back to ML.
For the benefit of some, ATC do not divert aircraft, that is a pilots decision. ATC will determine how they track to the new destination, but it certainly is a pilots decision where they go.
