V Australia cancellations

[Jason Le]

Noted that VA2 arrival for today from LAX has been cancelled as has the Fiji services it should have done later.

FlightAware also shows a V Aus flight from Honolulu to Nadi as VA7002.

Anyone have any ideas on these movements?

[Anthony T]

VA2 was about 1100km on the SYD side of HNL when it diverted, I don't know why it diverted, probably medical as it is now back in the air en-route to NAN as VA7002

[Marty H]

So obviously cancelled just the NAN inbound and will pick up the outbound pax on the way through to SYD, guess although the NAN idea is good for better use of the aircraft it does make it tight if VA2 from LAX-SYD is delayed or diverted enroute.

[Blair M]

Diverted due to Medical.

Crew out of hours, so fly to NAN. SYD-NAN-SYD crew to pax to NAN and collect the plane.

SYD-NAN-SYD cancelled on the 777 but will operate with PB 737. SYD-VLI-SYD cancelled. VB B737 to fly BNE-NAN-BNE and PB 737 to now do a BNE-VLI-BNE trip.

Has affected the domestic network too, with some cancelled flights to free up the B737s to do the extra flights.

Confused!? I am.

[Andrew P]

so I read this as V Australia has donwgraded flight SYD-NAN-SYD from a 777 to a 737

woh loads on thier new route must be awful, if they can fit all 777 passengers into a 737!!!

[Grahame Hutchison]

1621L VA7003 VH-VPD just arrived - the flight number does not match the board in Sydney.

[Paul Hunter]

Andrew,

I believe some V Australia pax out of Sydney and Nadi were uplifted by Air Pacific.

Regards.

[Adam G]

Grahame - the 4 diget flight numbers after diversions are for ATC & internal system purposes only, the flight as far as pax/airports are concerned remains to be the original flight number until the aircraft reaches the scheduled destination.

[JamesW]

I believe VB/PB will need 2 737 flights to recover the SYD-NAN-SYD flight so they are working on that to.

[NickN]

I stayed at the Stamford Saturday night, and there was quite a few DJ 737's sitting parked at the GA area in the morning was this due to lack of gates at the terminal or something to do with the extra a/c required for this dilemma?

[Andrew M]

Eventually VAus will learn that you need to have some breathing space in the schedules to allow for such events.

[NickN]

Tiger had the same issues until they had enough a/c in their fleet to cope with disruptions.

[Andrew M]

From memory they are not getting any more 777's until around the Sep/Oct of 2010, which is over 9 months away.

Even then they will be using the planes to maximum capacity and any delay/diversion for whatever reason is going to cause headaches!

[Blair M]

There is a scheduled break all day in LAX from BNE. Also, the turn times in all ports allow for catch up time. Min turn time is around 90mins for a full clean etc..

But not many airlines will purposely schedule downtime for the unplanned medical diversion.