While not a passenger flight, transfer of an A388 that had been undergoing maintenance in MNL was meant to see a Wednesday 29 November departure at 0020 hours for a SYD arrival today at 1125.
Instead, the transfer has been retimed to depart at the unseemly hour of 0330 on Thursday 1 December for a projected SYD same day arrival time of 1350.
Given that these transfers up and back are timed to (if all goes well) eliminate any disruption to the A388 schedules, I am unsure whether the day-long delay means a departure ex SYD will be late but there is nothing so indicated on the QF website. As AFFers such as Quickstatus previously pointed out, the peak days for QFi long haul flights (excluding school holidays and pre-Christmas and Holy Week) tend to be Friday to Monday inclusive, although if I recall Thursday is busier than the slacker, lower demand days of Tuesdays and Wednesdays. One of our esteemed pilot contributors commented ages ago that these maintenance transfers were carefully planned months or longer in advance but if a (say) pilot develops a virus in MNL and cannot operate the flight back to Oz, that is a possible reason for a 24 hour delay.