FR24 shows an ETA that's about 40 minutes late. You need to separate departure time (which is the time of push back), and airborne time. Whilst 20 minutes is the standard allowed time between push and airborne, it can extend well beyond that if there are delays for any reason. It also looks to have been held at FL320 for much longer than you'd want...so that has the effect of burning more fuel, and losing time. Beyond that, it's a standard route over Iran, and was often used by choice, depending upon the weather.
No, on this occasion, as can be the case, FR24 is wrong (although unusually, it is underestimating the delay, not overestimating that it tends to do far more often).
I used the QF website as my source for this one.
This flight departed SIN on Friday night at 2352 hours but did not take off until 0052 hours on Saturday 2 March.
I'm well aware that departure time is the time of pushback, while arrival time is at gate, not when an aircraft lands, as the latter is nice to know and evidence of good work by all concerned but not when passengers are about to be able to alight.
You've previously stated that for larger aircraft, 20 to 25 minutes is the time allowed in a schedule for pushback to becoming airborne, so yes, on this occasion that process chewed up an extra 32 to 37 minutes.
At 1741 AEDT this afternoon (0641 hours UK time) on Saturday 2 March, QF1 (A388 VH-OQL) was a little south of Aachen, Germany, so there's no way it's only 40 minutes late compared to its scheduled 0615 hours arrival.
I however omitted to add five minutes to what the QF website shows as the landing time of 0735, so as to allow for the taxi time to the gate, a subject that you have previously discussed with me and agreed that five minutes was a reasonable allowance (not 100 per cent accurate, of course).
So if arrival is at 0740, that will be 85 late.
On many occasions, I check these estimated arrival times via multiple websites and am suspicious of FR24 because for whatever reason it exaggerates delays, particularly for international flights.
In contrast, airline websites (while subject to revision as flights unexpectedly are placed in holds) and FlightAware seem to be more accurate. The above, however, in underestimating a delay is unusual for FR24.
UPDATE: The flight arrived at its gate at 0728 hours, 73 minutes behind schedule.
