Late night Mel - Syd flight diversions - Thu 28/2

[Jeff N]

Just noticed a short time ago that a number of late night Mel - Syd flights have only made it half way back to Sydney before being turned around and sent back to Mel.

From memory QF 494, VA 891 and 895, plus a Jetstar flight have all returned to Mel.

I have no idea why. Sydney has light to steady rain but nothing overly obnoxious to interfere with airport operations..

These planes would have had time to go the distance with most of them being turned around by 10pm mid flight.

Any clues?

[NeilP]

Hi,

My wife was on VA879. Sat on YMML tarmac for an hour, circled for 30 mins before touching down just over 2hours behind...

They were told delayed departure was to to "adverse weather" in Sydney, and circling due to traffic conjestion...

[Jeff N]

If it is as it seems, I have just finished watching a scandalous display of bloodymindedness.

Virgin flight 540 ex Coolangatta was on final approach to Sydney over Leichhardt when at 2302 it suddenly veered away to the southeast.

It is now at 38000 ft heading NE just over Taree.

Unless there is another reason, this flight seems to have been turned away only 60 seconds short of landing, and would have hit the ground at 2303!

It would seem that the flight is being made to return all the way the Coolangatta with its load of passengers, who will consequently suffer extensively for this.

How can this be in the best interests of anybody other than a few precious residents under the flight path who would have been, and pretty much already were, inconvenienced by a mere couple of minutes ...BIG DEAL!

The fact that the Federal Minister concerned is also the local member surely has to be an unacceptable conflict of interest.

At the same time as this, a Singapore Cargo 747 took off at 2307, followed a moment later by QF21 to Narita.

This bloke will one day press the wrong person's buttons, and finish up taking a slug (either type) for allowing this sort of stuff!

[Rowan McKeever]

Hi Jeff... OOL for that flight would require a dispensation for the OOL curfew. At face value BNE seems more likely? Cheers, Rowan

[JamesL]

Went to BNE

[Jeff N]

Yep... just touched down in Bris at 0013.

What now .... 3 hours sleep in a plastic gate lounge chair before being herded back onto the plane at 0430.

Sleepwise, it'll take these people until Saturday morning to get back to normal, let alone the inconvenience of walking around like zombies all day tomorrow, just so the flight path residents didn't have to endure three minutes of post curfew noise!

Sydney ...the global city and gateway to Australia. What an absolute joke!

[Stefan Perkas]

EK414 A6-ECM diverted to Melbourne

[Sarah C]

Another example of the stupidy of the certain minister and the NIMBYS. Airlines cant control the weather and yrt it costs the airlines passengers because of curfew. Sydney Airport is an embarrassment

[Chris B.]

Yep I concur Jeff. I have been in the same situation before where it was the weather in Melbourne that caused us the delay, the crew pushed and pushed to get us to Sydney before curfew, we flew over Kurnell and now over the water (I'd say maybe 500ft) only to be told we missed out coz of curfew and we then diverted to Brisbane! I would have thought we'd make more noise going around!??

[Rowan McKeever]

I was thinking the same thing Chris... 60 secs from touchdown you're over water, so surely the GA only generates MORE noise over the suburbs north and maybe east of the airport? With all the tracking etc available to ATC these days wouldn't it have been more appropriate to advise the crew it wasn't going to be possible to get them into SYD pre-curfew so that the diversion could've been enacted earlier (perhaps even early enough to get back into OOL so that OOL residents could return to their own homes)?

[Kim F]

I saw a Jetstar flight land in Canberra last night - much earlier though

[Steve S... 2]

I also saw a Jetstar flight VH-VQN a couple weeks ago decending into Sydney a couple of minutes before curfew, which would have had it on the ground at 11.01pm - it turned back to Melbourne.

The numerous people who have their lives in termoil for the night for the sake of 1 minute.

It is stupid political moments like this that make you embarrassed to be Australian.

Melbourne and Brisbane deserve to take the crown away from Sydney as the gateway to Australia.

[Paul S.]

I see there are plenty more delays today. virgin have on the web page its due to weather in SYD and an upgrade of the ILS at Syd. They have already cax their one and only flight to BNK

[Raymond Z]

I live right under the flightpath where planes are around 600 ft above me. Even if planes land at 11.10pm I honestly wouldn't care. Politicians and Sydney Airport....get real. For the sake of a few minutes of breaking curfew you send many passengers back to their original destination when it isn't their fault that they are only going to land a few minutes after 11pm. The loudest aircraft last night would've been the Emirates 777 and that's already quiet.

[Adam P.]

With all the tracking etc available to ATC these days wouldn't it have been more appropriate to advise the crew it wasn't going to be possible to get them into SYD pre-curfew so that the diversion could've been enacted earlier (perhaps even early enough to get back into OOL so that OOL residents could return to their own homes)?
Assuming there are no sequencing considerations that might require a further delay of the arriving aircraft (and that's unlikely at that time of night unless there are lots of other aircraft all in the same boat), it's not a decision for ATC to make. The crew probably have a better idea of when they'll get there anyway - TAAATS estimates from so far out can be quite different from actuals if the forecast winds differ markedly from reality, for example.
I have seen ATC give direct tracking etc where available to try and facilitate a 'fastest possible' flight time, even from a very long way out (like a flight from Perth requesting - and getting - a severe short cut from somewhere well west of Adelaide, for example).
But when it comes down to literally seconds between making it in time or not, given all the variation in the system - winds at different levels or locations etc - no technology is going to be accurate enough to be definitive from so far out.

[Rowan McKeever]

I understand nothing's accurate at the Qld end of that flight, or perhaps even up around CFS way. What I was suggesting is that, given VA540 last night arrived at 2313L in BNE & had at least 2 enroute holds on the way down to SYD, someone should've made the decision even 10-15 mins earlier that SYD was out of reach so that a return to OOL would've been an option. Maybe that person should've been ATC, maybe the Captain, maybe VA Ops, but given ATC has the most information about the overall traffic situation at each airport they ought to have some kind of trigger point.

As Raymond says the only people who really suffered last night were those on the plane.