Electrical issues affecting IFE and toiletsCould someone who has a Twitter account please pop a brief, sensible comment 'on' to try to obtain a response from QF as to why QF7 returned to SYD?
Saturday 6 December's QF2 from LHR and DXB to SYD (VH-OQG) has commenced an unscheduled stop in PER. The QF website shows it planned to depart from PER at 0445 (0745 AEDT) for an 1125 arrival in SYD, four hours and 35 minutes late.
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I saw the 380 there yesterday morning as we taxied out to the runway... and it wasn't even connected to the terminal... they had its cough pointing to towards the international terminal in a snub
Quickstatus, the logical answer is 'yes' but for QF and any other transport operator (air/ rail/ coach) there is a tradeoff.
If QF finds that it saves millions of dollars a year from improved A388 fleet utilisation, it doubtless hopes that the number of unplanned delays is minimal. This helps to keep or bring shareholders on side while not aggravating passengers and freight forwarders too much.
If you look back at the last two or three pages, I and others have highlighted some recent significant delays. This is annoying for passengers, bothersome for staff and costly for the airline (accommodating 150 out of towners in SYD or MEL who can't just be given return taxi vouchers to spend another night at home is not cheap even at airline negotiated hotel rates, and it can be hard to find largish numbers of rooms at short notice.) There's also the (temporary?) loss of goodwill from passengers who miss their first business appointments, or who cut it fine and are connecting to a train or a coach tour overseas. The latter does happen: some schedule even holidays tightly. I've done that to try to get the most out of finite time off.
As we see with the QF7 delay and QF2 PER unplanned flight termination, these delays flow on to other flights (respectively in these cases QF8 and QF11.)
It would be good to read the views of regular flyers such as Princess Fiona, John K, blackcat and so on: do these AFFers have a 'forgiving' mentality when it comes to these sometimes lengthy delays provided they have a hotel room in which to sleep, use WiFi and dine, or are they annoyed?
Compounding the difficulty is the instant 'Twitterverse', Facebook and most especially a media that not just wants to be first with the latest but also hypercritical at times. The community sort of knows that modes such as planes and trains are inherently far safer than travelling on a motorbike or in a car, but that means when an incident occurs, it's widely publicised even if these's no loss of life nor was there ever going to be.
Nonetheless, QF would not want to repeat the last couple of days too often.
It will be especially interesting to see if the European and USA winters (plus Vancouver, now that QF has six return flights scheduled) affect the punctuality of the A388 and B744 fleet in an even more adverse way.
Tonight's news that a fourth QF flight turned back (this time a B717 ex HBA flying to MEL - reveals defensiveness in the Qantas CEO's response:
That may be something to do with people trying to connect essentially unrelated events.
Or outsourced maintenance...
This assumes you're not missing a cruise connection, wedding, funeral, barmitzvah or similar - but most of us factor possible delay calculations into critical event timings.