MEL/HND woes continue. On Friday May 12 QF79 left MEL 4.25 hours late and arrived just under 4 hours late. Those unlucky passengers would have had few transport options when they arrived (taxi for most).
Tonight QF80 is planned to leave HND 4.5 hours late. And, perhaps in turn, flight QF79 on Sunday May 14 from MEL is due to depart ~3.5 hours late. Those unlucky passengers, myself included, are going to have the same limited transport options on arrival.
Anyone know why Qantas' schedule is so poor on this route in recent days?
It's the one aircraft, A333 VH-QPE, so given on Friday 12 May QF79 did not take off from MEL until 1459 hours mid afternoon for a 1030 hours scheduled flight, and arrived Japan's HND at 2354, 234 minutes late, it's been impossible to regain time.
It then operated QF26 to Sydney, arriving on Saturday 13 at 1130 hours, 160 minutes behind schedule, with its next duty being QF25 that was delayed overnight, taking off at 1435 on Saturday for arrival at 2312 late at night instead of 0525 in the morning, so 1067 minutes late. There are only very limited slot times IIRC that aircraft into and out of Japan can use if delayed, so that may have been a reason for QF25's overnight delay.
So it's now on QF80, the 2105 hours scheduled ex HND on Saturday 13 that was airborne at 0154 this morning for estimated MEL arrival of 1240 hours, 245 late.
As you can see, unlike the previous QF25/QF26 schedules SYD-Japan-SYD, the aircraft no longer spend all day in Japan.
I assume in MEL for instance today QFi doesn't have a 'spare' A333 that it could substitute to ensure 'the 79' departed on time or close to it for the run to HND.
Minimum mandatory crew rest periods for fatigue management probably also do not 'help' when planes start to run badly late.
