Vh-qpa A330

[Jayden Laing]

Hi,
Just wondering, today I was at YSSY & notice a QF A330-300 VH-QPA climbing out of YSSY with its landing gear still down.
It arrived about 7:17am this morning but later departed around 11:40am. It left its landing down instead of retracting them. I kept watching it as it still hadn't retracted them when it was somewhere over the Homebush area.
The only reason i could have thought about it was to cool the brakes down but surely the brakes don't need roughly 4.5hrs to cool down . I could be wrong here but it just seemed unusual & the amount of drag being created wouldn't have helped to save fuel especially with the price of fuel these days.

Cheers,
Jayden