Poor weather in Syd tonight with a lot of aircraft holding. I just noticed on flightradar that QF559 from Brisbane circled a few times before performing a missed approach a minute or two prior to 11pm. He is now on his way to Melbourne with an ETA of around midnight. He was the last arrival in a very difficult evening.
Would QF559 not be permitted to make a second attempt at Sydney and therefore have to fly on to Melbourne? If this is the case, that's a tough call for both crew and passengers on a late Sunday night flight, many no doubt have work/ school/ family commitments in the morning.
Couldn't such a policy encourage some pilots to take risks to get the plane down even if conditions are not optimum?
Ironically, about 8 international and domestic flights have continued to take off from 11 - 11:30pm - I assume some were 'off blocks' prior to then? I did hear however both QF21 and QF31(very late?) say at around 11:26pm, that they had dispensations which had just expired. They had to call for an extension while lining up on the runway before departing on the half hour.
Bluebird 93 was sent back to the gate after lining up but this may have been a tech reason. ATC told them 'we tried'. Having listened for a while - ATC certainly had done a great job in trying to accommodate the weather and subsequent aircraft requests across the evening.
Would QF559 not be permitted to make a second attempt at Sydney and therefore have to fly on to Melbourne? If this is the case, that's a tough call for both crew and passengers on a late Sunday night flight, many no doubt have work/ school/ family commitments in the morning.
Couldn't such a policy encourage some pilots to take risks to get the plane down even if conditions are not optimum?
Ironically, about 8 international and domestic flights have continued to take off from 11 - 11:30pm - I assume some were 'off blocks' prior to then? I did hear however both QF21 and QF31(very late?) say at around 11:26pm, that they had dispensations which had just expired. They had to call for an extension while lining up on the runway before departing on the half hour.
Bluebird 93 was sent back to the gate after lining up but this may have been a tech reason. ATC told them 'we tried'. Having listened for a while - ATC certainly had done a great job in trying to accommodate the weather and subsequent aircraft requests across the evening.
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