Qantas Delays/Cancellations

[Kangol]

Re: QF1 delayed in DXB three days in a row

Interesting, which website are you looking at to get these figures?
I have a QF9 connecting to a BA LHR-LIS next month. Connection is tight but within MCT at LHR - starting to get somewhat concerned...

 

[Melburnian1]

Re: QF1 delayed in DXB three days in a row

Kangol, you can use a variety of websites to obtain this information.

These include FlightStats - Global Flight Tracker, Status Tracking and Airport Information , Qantas - flights to Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia. Book airfares at qantas.com. and various airport sites such as Melbourne Airport (which does not show 'pushback' times off the blocks for each flight, but rather takeoff times that can vary in how long this takes to achieve from pushback) and Sydney Airport - Travellers while Heathrow: Welcome to Heathrow Airport | Parking can also show you the picture as to how all flights are performing on a particular day at a particular 'live' point in time.

The FlightStats and similar sites can be useful as they give the percentage of times in a specified period that flight X has arrived 'on time' and then various percentages for unpunctuality by groups of number of minutes late.

There is also Flight Availability | Upgrades | Frequent Flyer Information (although for the higher levels of detail you may need to subscribe, at a cost) while if you want to monitor a particular flight's progress, there are specialist sites such as Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker! and FlightAware - Flight Tracker / Flight Status / Flight Tracking among others.

Watching live flight arrivals and departures can give us an idea of the complex decisions that ATC controllers face. You may also enjoy logging in to www.liveatc.net The ICAO code for MEL is YMML while for SYD it is YSSY.

I and others have discussed QF9's performance in a separate thread.

 

[Melburnian1]

Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

Considering QF and competitor VA"s consolidated operations of their various divisions, net profits after tax are thin on the ground in total and way below what most shareholders would like.

As is often the case, the pressure is on to reduce unit costs per available seat kilometre.

One way to do this is (assuming sufficient demand) is to operate a plane for longer each day.

The SYD curfew can make this a bit hairy.

One example is the return rotation of JQ625/ JQ 626 SYD - AVV - SYD.

On Thursday 29 August, JQ625 departed SYD 42 minutes late at 1922, arriving AVV 53 late at 2108. A relatively long turnaround for JQ ensued (36 minutes) with departure at 2144 for a 'close shave' arrival at SYD at 2259 (which is the arrival time at gate, not landing time). The latter is due at SYD at 2205.

Tonight (Sunday 1 September) JQ625 departed SYD at 1914 but did not take off until after 1930, and is shown as due at AVV at 2055.

The current Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister may be about to be 'ejected' from that seat (pun intended) on Saturday 7 September, but he has been reluctant to have his delegates approve many dispensations, although during the election campaign there were unproven allegations splashed across a newspaper that his attitude had suddenly changed. A report is always eventually published on a quarterly basis about granted or refused flight dispensation requests.

JQ needs to keep its aircraft utilisation rate up, but if anything goes wrong with JQ625 or JQ626, the passengers from AVV cannot be bussed to MEL to get to SYD before the official 2300 hours curfew kicks in. Nor can they be put on other evening flights ex AVV unless they wanted to end up in BNE.

While I have no doubt that airlines are experts at 'cutting it fine' and they know the history of their flights, this northbound AVV - SYD flight seems vulnerable to missing SYD curfew at least occasionally due to the inbound flight having to get out of what is six nights a week a very busy SYD between 1800 and 1930. I hope for everyone's sake that it's not too often that JQ passengers have to sleep at AVV or be conveyed to MEL for an 0600 flight the next morning if the early morning JQ SYD-bound flight ex AVV is full.

 

[mono88]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

One example is the return rotation of JQ625/ JQ 626 SYD - AVV - SYD.

On Thursday 29 August, JQ625 departed SYD 42 minutes late at 1922, arriving AVV 53 late at 2108. A relatively long turnaround for JQ ensued (36 minutes) with departure at 2144 for a 'close shave' arrival at SYD at 2259 (which is the arrival time at gate, not landing time). The latter is due at SYD at 2205.

Tonight (Sunday 1 September) JQ625 departed SYD at 1914 but did not take off until after 1930, and is shown as due at AVV at 2055.

The current Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister may be about to be 'ejected' from that seat (pun intended) on Saturday 7 September, but he has been reluctant to have his delegates approve many dispensations, although during the election campaign there were unproven allegations splashed across a newspaper that his attitude had suddenly changed. A report is always eventually published on a quarterly basis about granted or refused flight dispensation requests.

JQ needs to keep its aircraft utilisation rate up, but if anything goes wrong with JQ625 or JQ626, the passengers from AVV cannot be bussed to MEL to get to SYD before the official 2300 hours curfew kicks in. Nor can they be put on other evening flights ex AVV unless they wanted to end up in BNE.

While I have no doubt that airlines are experts at 'cutting it fine' and they know the history of their flights, this northbound AVV - SYD flight seems vulnerable to missing SYD curfew at least occasionally due to the inbound flight having to get out of what is six nights a week a very busy SYD between 1800 and 1930. I hope for everyone's sake that it's not too often that JQ passengers have to sleep at AVV or be conveyed to MEL for an 0600 flight the next morning if the early morning JQ SYD-bound flight ex AVV is full.

Do you know the history of this flight re missing the SYD curfew? Has it been a regular problem?

 

[Mattg]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

Do you know the history of this flight re missing the SYD curfew? Has it been a regular problem?

I am not aware of this flight having a regular issue and in any case it has 55 minutes to recover from any delays should it need to.

The problems with the SYD curfew seem to happen when there is some sort of unusual weather or something else which causes delays throughout the evening. An interesting case was QF44 on 2/12/12. The AKL-SYD flight routed AKL - SYD (did not land) - MEL - SYD (again, did not land) - MEL - SYD (the next morning). See this link: http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/travel-news/qf44-last-night-not-great-45444.html

 

[markis10]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

Considering QF and competitor VA"s consolidated operations of their various divisions, net profits after tax are thin on the ground in total and way below what most shareholders would like.

As is often the case, the pressure is on to reduce unit costs per available seat kilometre.

One way to do this is (assuming sufficient demand) is to operate a plane for longer each day.

The SYD curfew can make this a bit hairy.

One example is the return rotation of JQ625/ JQ 626 SYD - AVV - SYD.

On Thursday 29 August, JQ625 departed SYD 42 minutes late at 1922, arriving AVV 53 late at 2108. A relatively long turnaround for JQ ensued (36 minutes) with departure at 2144 for a 'close shave' arrival at SYD at 2259 (which is the arrival time at gate, not landing time). The latter is due at SYD at 2205.

Tonight (Sunday 1 September) JQ625 departed SYD at 1914 but did not take off until after 1930, and is shown as due at AVV at 2055.

The current Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister may be about to be 'ejected' from that seat (pun intended) on Saturday 7 September, but he has been reluctant to have his delegates approve many dispensations, although during the election campaign there were unproven allegations splashed across a newspaper that his attitude had suddenly changed. A report is always eventually published on a quarterly basis about granted or refused flight dispensation requests.

JQ needs to keep its aircraft utilisation rate up, but if anything goes wrong with JQ625 or JQ626, the passengers from AVV cannot be bussed to MEL to get to SYD before the official 2300 hours curfew kicks in. Nor can they be put on other evening flights ex AVV unless they wanted to end up in BNE.

While I have no doubt that airlines are experts at 'cutting it fine' and they know the history of their flights, this northbound AVV - SYD flight seems vulnerable to missing SYD curfew at least occasionally due to the inbound flight having to get out of what is six nights a week a very busy SYD between 1800 and 1930. I hope for everyone's sake that it's not too often that JQ passengers have to sleep at AVV or be conveyed to MEL for an 0600 flight the next morning if the early morning JQ SYD-bound flight ex AVV is full.

JQ626 rarely features in said dispensation reports (which are not quarterly published), much ado about nothing methinks!

 

[Simo]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

You would have to think management would be telling them to put the foot down a bit more on the way back if it looks like they will miss the curfew.

 

[markis10]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

You would have to think management would be telling them to put the foot down a bit more on the way back if it looks like they will miss the curfew.

They would be lucky to make up a minute at max on that leg.

 

[mono88]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

You would have to think management would be telling them to put the foot down a bit more on the way back if it looks like they will miss the curfew.

I hope management would not do that, safety should be a higher priority than making the curfew.

 

[Melburnian1]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

I don't call missing the curfew by one minute 'much ado about nothing.'

If the plane was a few minutes later and dispensation was not granted by the Minister's delegate, 100 or 150 JQ passengers could find themselves in AVV, MEL or CBR (depending on when JQ knew that it would be unable to land the flight in SYD and perhaps how much reserve fuel the plane carried) for the night.

 

[mono88]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

I am not aware of this flight having a regular issue and in any case it has 55 minutes to recover from any delays should it need to.

The problems with the SYD curfew seem to happen when there is some sort of unusual weather or something else which causes delays throughout the evening. An interesting case was QF44 on 2/12/12. The AKL-SYD flight routed AKL - SYD (did not land) - MEL - SYD (again, did not land) - MEL - SYD (the next morning). See this link: http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/travel-news/qf44-last-night-not-great-45444.html

Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I can see your point re unusual events causing some issues with Sydney curfew. Time restrictions in any activity will always cause issues at some point.

 

[elbarto]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

Tonight (Sunday 1 September) JQ625 departed SYD at 1914 but did not take off until after 1930, and is shown as due at AVV at 2055.

So you're suggesting the crew piss fart around for 15 minutes before deciding to take off?

 

[flying_double]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

I don't think it's a regular occurrence, but while on flightrader24 on a cold lonely night a few months ago, I saw 626 do a U-turn just past CBR to head back to AVV. It was a night when there had been significant disruption due to weather and a lot of aircraft were trying to get in between 2240 and 2259.


Have also been on the last VA MEL-SYD flight on a Sunday night that had to make up a lot of time to beat the curfew, notably on the descent which was very quick and very steep. Earlier in MEL, we also had to line up at the gate in row order to streamline the boarding process. During the flight, the tech crew made an announcement that they'd do everything to get us down in time but there was a risk we may have to return to MEL. Timed to perfection, they got us onto 34L at 2259.

 

[RickyT84]

Re: Cutting it fine with the SYD curfew, JQ style

On the occassions that the flights I have been on were running extremely late, the crew would either fly at a lower altitude and/or request a high speed decent in the hope of making up time which I think would be the case here. Thankfully, I have never been on a flight which has to return to the origin due to the curfew and I hope I never will.

 

[Melburnian1]

QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

Of late, flagship flight QF1 has had reasonably good punctuality between SYD and DXB, sometimes arriving early at DXB. Any delays have been in excess time on the ground at DXB leading to a later than the timetabled 0635 + 1 arrival at LHR.

Today, Thursday 5 September 2013 however, QF1 departed SYD 123 minutes late at 1753. QF predicts that it will arrive and depart DXB at 0145 and 0315 respectively, both 70 minutes late, with a forecast 50 minute late (0725 + 1) arrival at LHR.

What went wrong? Did a spare A380 have to be substituted at the last minute? VH-OQG is doing the honours tonight.

 

[markis10]

Re: QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

People who fly frequently know delays happen, pondering why is a waste of time, and ignores the obvious fact that things are not always perfect where humans are involved.

 

[spudseamus]

Re: QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

Better late ,,,,,,,,than never!

 

[awilcockson]

Re: QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

Let's hope that doesn't happen next Saturday, I already have 8 hours in the F Lounge, 10 might be pushing it

 

[ozmille]

Re: QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

couple of weeks ago we had a 6h delay on our way to DXB on QF1, but there are worse places to be than in the Flounge

 

[Melburnian1]

Re: QF1 delayed by two hours in SYD

markis10, I may not fly as frequently as you, but I fly reasonably frequently and have done so for many years. A 15 minute or half hour delay is relatively common for a lot of flights worldwide. Two hours is getting towards the stage of 'major' and may be of interest to AFFers with friends or relatives on the flight. If it's something systemic, it may interest a wider audience.

QF has publicised these A380 flights via DXB as the next best thing to sliced bread. Understandably, it wouldn't like publicity re significant delays. The latter isn't what the advertising implies will be a seamless, routine and presumably punctual travel experience.

ozmille, great that you could enjoy sitting in the first class lounge, as long as you did not have any urgent appointments in DXB, LHR or elsewhere. This isn't always the everyday experience for many reasonably frequent flyers, who are among the 80 per cent plus of air travellers in economy class seats (although some have lounge access, though not necessarily FLounge).