Rainy weather in Sydney
 

Pity you couldn't send some of the rain over here to Adelaide...


A QF FF reported that heavy rain in Sydney early last night caused them to have to sit in the holding point queue for almost 25 minutes.

The pax was on VH-VZA QF 743 SYD-ADL with an elapsed block time of 2 hrs 25 minutes, normally its about 1 hour 55.

Also on Friday night on QF 785 SYD-ADL , a well known Adelaide identity reported that they also spent about 25 minutes in the queue.

They arrived Adelaide just before curfew and a possible diversion and overnight in Canberra was avoided ( the pax raised the subject with an FA whilst waiting at SYD ).

It sounded as though the flight was given preferential take-off priority to avoid busting ADL curfew....can ATC do that?

Just out of curiousity, if a SYD-ADL flight doesn't meet the ADL curfew, why would it divert to CBR to overnight and not MEL? It has already happened once before and I never quite understood why. MEL surely is both closer and has more parking space and hotel rooms!

The clouds at Sydney airport last night were dark, low & thick. A Virgin Blue plane conducted a go around from about where the Stamford is. One my way home, I was talking to a passenger on a Jetstar flight from Melbourne & he said that the plane was shaking all over the place when on approach into Sydney after being in a holding pattern somewhere for about 20mins.

Not just SYD - current Merimbula TAF:
In fact overnight the runway down there was closed because it was just too wet and had gone soft...

Word (allegedly) came from the Airservices National Operations Centre in Canberra that the Adelaide jets had to jump the queue. No idea who actually made that decision, but there were a few upset pilots, especially considering others in the queue were departing for Brisbane or Melbourne and had to come back to beat the Sydney curfew anyway!