Delays into Port Macquarie

[kempvet]

I read in the Daily Telegraph that Port Macquarie PQQ held the record for the domestic terminal where the delays were greatest. Again this morning, there was a 2 hour delay because the plane being used for the 8.00am flight from SYD-PQQ was stuck in Dubbo because of the fog. The question I want to ask, with at least 4 flights a day SYD-PQQ it is time that QF placed a dedicated high capacity propeller job on this network, rather than trying to pull smaller planes from places like Dubbo to meet demand, I have never known PQQ to have fog and I must have made at least 30 trips from this airport.
Just place the largest propeller job that they have and run it back and forward between PQQ-SYD so that it is not affected by the fog more common in the inland airports. It is not acceptable, that the SYD-PQQ route which is in direct competition with VA suffer continual delays when planes are brought in from areas more likely to be affected by fog to start from SYD. It is getting a little annoying coming back from the States and losing basically the mornings work because of the continual delays on this route.

 

[elbarto]

They may not have the aircraft to dedicate one to this route alone.

 

[Conrad_S]

I'm always surprised when I hear that Port leads the figures on delayed flights. I use the airport (Qantaslink) almost every week and apart from small delays related to ATC in Sydney in the mornings and the general delays that seem to build up from Sydney in the afternoons/evenings I don't see anything in particular that suggests the delays are worse than anywhere else. I tend to use the earlier and later flights so maybe the big delays are with the flights in the middle of the day.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the runway upgrade is complete. Certainly the flights seem to have a pretty high load factor most days.

 

[Tuddy]

They may not have the aircraft to dedicate one to this route alone.

Perhaps. Though if you consider that all QFLink NSW routes out of SYD now have 5 daily flights at similar times (ABX, ARM, CFS, DBO, PQQ, TMW and WGA), there shouldn't be any reason why one aircraft couldn't be dedicated to, say, flying just the Sydney-Port Macquarie route. Other than for maintenance purposes when some changing around would need to occur of course. But I can see some logic in the OP.

 

[JohnK]

I thought the on-time performance figures were published recently and BNE was the worse airport closely followed by SYD.

 

[N860CR]

QantasLink have just reduced capacity a little from PMQ with many flights downgraded from a Q400 back to a Q300. A Q300 now overnights most nights in PMQ and it will go onto operate the first SYD-PMQ flight which should reduce delays. Using the 400 would have a negative impact if anything.

The first flights out of SYD in the AM to the outports are operated by aircraft and crews coming off an overnight (ie: they'll go DBO-SYD-PMQ-SYD to maximize aircraft utilisation with the morning shift. The afternoon shifts will operate onto the overnights. A lot of work goes into maximizing aircraft and crew utilisation and having both operate mid-morning shifts on single routes is inefficient. A PMQ-SYD-PMQ-SYD roatation with the Q300 should hopefully improve reliability.

 

[Conrad_S]

QantasLink have just reduced capacity a little from PMQ with many flights downgraded from a Q400 back to a Q300. A Q300 now overnights most nights in PMQ and it will go onto operate the first SYD-PMQ flight which should reduce delays. Using the 400 would have a negative impact if anything.

The first flights out of SYD in the AM to the outports are operated by aircraft and crews coming off an overnight (ie: they'll go DBO-SYD-PMQ-SYD to maximize aircraft utilisation with the morning shift. The afternoon shifts will operate onto the overnights. A lot of work goes into maximizing aircraft and crew utilisation and having both operate mid-morning shifts on single routes is inefficient. A PMQ-SYD-PMQ-SYD roatation with the Q300 should hopefully improve reliability.

Sorry not sure I understood this post. Did you mean that they are moving to a PMQ-SYD-PMQ-SYD rotation in the morning?

On the aircraft side of things they are predominately Q300s on the first flight in the morning but the 0930 from PQQ seems to vary. Last Wed it was a very new Q400.

 

[RB]

I'm always surprised when I hear that Port leads the figures on delayed flights. I use the airport (Qantaslink) almost every week and apart from small delays related to ATC in Sydney in the mornings and the general delays that seem to build up from Sydney in the afternoons/evenings I don't see anything in particular that suggests the delays are worse than anywhere else. I tend to use the earlier and later flights so maybe the big delays are with the flights in the middle of the day.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the runway upgrade is complete. Certainly the flights seem to have a pretty high load factor most days.

I think you may be a lucky charm or your definition of "small delays" differs from many people. I don't fly so often but I hear the flights go over just after takeoff & I certainly wouldn't be telling the time according to the flights.
Interesting that the problem for the OP used related to DBO. It used to be a roll on from problems in ABX

 

[Conrad_S]

I think you may be a lucky charm or your definition of "small delays" differs from many people. I don't fly so often but I hear the flights go over just after takeoff & I certainly wouldn't be telling the time according to the flights.
Interesting that the problem for the OP used related to DBO. It used to be a roll on from problems in ABX

If I were the lucky charm then I think Lotto might have come my way by now.


Had a brief look at the flightstats site for QFA PQQ-SYD and I suspect it has more to do with the times that I normally fly (early down and late back).


For the period 1/2/13-31/3/13 the QF2161 leaving PQQ at 06:30 had an 81% ontime performance. I think this means that only 8/44 flights departed more than 15 minutes late with an average delay of 17 minutes. In the other direction QF2178 leaving SYD at 18:30 had 71% ontime, 17/43 delayed with the average delay of 19 minutes. It looked like was generally a bit worse than this during the day.


This pretty much matches my experience that flights in the morning pretty much leave close to schedule and the flights back tend to have a few more delays. Just so long as I don't get one of the dreaded cancellations tomorrow morning.:-|

 

[N860CR]

Sorry not sure I understood this post. Did you mean that they are moving to a PMQ-SYD-PMQ-SYD rotation in the morning?

On the aircraft side of things they are predominately Q300s on the first flight in the morning but the 0930 from PQQ seems to vary. Last Wed it was a very new Q400.

That's correct.

The Q400 has been moved (not all of them, but a lot of them) from PQQ (to use the IATA code) to service DBO.