Quiet an interesting flight path, Tristan with the planned great circle route up and over and going well north of Hawaii and then south-sou-east into LAX. I would say that the flight path is weather related with possibly forecasted higher head winds further south. The other SYD-LAX flights are travelling along the more usual southerly route but up to 50 mph slower.
I have seen US west coast flights from MEL take the MEL-OOL route well west of SYD but it is more prevalent with flights coming from the west coast to SYD, particularly with Air Canada often and others sometimes crossing the coast well up the NSW coast.
I don't think that it is precautionary, as if the aircraft is fit to fly, it is fit to fly its usual routes and needs all systems in full working order to fly ETOPS flights. With OQD not having flown since Monday night and OQG doing a couple of one and a half hour training flights around SYD today QANTAS could have easily have used one of these A380s to fly across the Pacific instead.
According to Flightaware both QF11 and UA842 are due to arrive in LAX at 6:19 so we'll be able to see which was the quicker route. UA842 departed SYD at 12:02 and QF11 at 12:26 so OQH was 24 minutes after United.
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