VA Cancellations, Delays growing?

[Sleepy Sloth]

My VA flight this afternoon ex SYD cancelled due to crew shortage.

Hello flight-cancellation crew shortage twin!

 

[kamchatsky]

I haven’t flown domestic flights in 4 years. Reading this thread has made me nervous on my upcoming VA925 SYD-BNE departing at 9am on Boxing Day. I need to connect (separate ticket) to CX156 at 00:40 next day. What is the chance of of cancellation of flight and then they place us to next day flights, hence missing my CX flight?

 

[Sleepy Sloth]

Not as bad as being sold tickets on non existent / cancelled flights.
Fighting for the refund for hours on the blower and then only being able to use the credit on more expensive flights.

Now that's ordinary.

UGH! I've told Virgin that I will accept my refund for the twice cancelled flight as an actual REFUND, not credit.

I've also told them they will be compensating me for the cost of my Qantas flight that I had no choice but to book. The second flight they booked me on was a non-existent flight never destined to go anywhere. They announced the cancellation at the time of boarding (same as the original flight) and 15 minutes later when I went AGAIN to get my bags off the carousel, they were already there and apparently had been going around for a while.

 

[MooTime]

UGH! I've told Virgin that I will accept my refund for the twice cancelled flight as an actual REFUND, not credit.

I've also told them they will be compensating me for the cost of my Qantas flight that I had no choice but to book. The second flight they booked me on was a non-existent flight never destined to go anywhere. They announced the cancellation at the time of boarding (same as the original flight) and 15 minutes later when I went AGAIN to get my bags off the carousel, they were already there and apparently had been going around for a while.

Stinks what Airlines do at times.
Been in ordinary situations myself, feel like abandoning the airline's for good, but once you feel that for both airlines, no choice but to go back to them in time.

 

[Sleepy Sloth]

I haven’t flown domestic flights in 4 years. Reading this thread has made me nervous on my upcoming VA925 SYD-BNE departing at 9am on Boxing Day. I need to connect (separate ticket) to CX156 at 00:40 next day. What is the chance of of cancellation of flight and then they place us to next day flights, hence missing my CX flight?

I'd say the chance of not getting to BNE that same day is low if your original 9am flight is cancelled / rescheduled. You've got all day to sit and wait around at the airport (joy. lol) and if they put you on a flight that is also then cancelled like mine was, it will likely be an earlier service, so you will at least have more time and options to re-book with another carrier.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

Stinks what Airlines do at times.
Been in ordinary situations myself, feel like abandoning the airline's for good, but once you feel that for both airlines, no choice but to go back to them in time.

So true.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Just a quick question on the on-time stats posted above, as i haven’t read the article in full….

Is it still the case that ‘on time’ = within 15 minutes? So in reality, the delays are far, far worse.

With the huge padding of schedules, the 1pm used to arrive in MEL at say 215. Now it can arrive at 240 and still be ‘on time’ (15 mins after the scheduled 225 arrival).

Airlines may not think 15 mins is a big deal, but you multiply that by 50 or 100 flights a year as a commuter and they’re just wasting pax time. That’s between 12 and 25 hours worth of delay.

 

[RooFlyer]

Is it still the case that ‘on time’ = within 15 minutes? So in reality, the delays are far, far worse.

Yes.

Another issue with BITRE is that they only look at cancellations within a week (IIRC) of schedule. Therefore, Qantas' sale then cancellation of the so-called ghost flights were never captured by BITRE.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

With the widely reported ‘wave’ of covid supposedly hitting I wonder if the situation of crew shortage is going to be even more severe over the coming weeks?

Airlines really need to have more crew on standby. I was really impressed the other day that qantas had a spare crew that boarded the flight while waiting for the operating crew to come in from another gate.

We were boarded, seated and ready to go… the inbound then did their final checks and we were off, more or less on time. It would have been a 30 minute delay otherwise.

 

[A321]

I've seen this happen a couple of times now.
First it happened for the well publicised ADL-PER Coldplay cancellation.

Check out VH-IJU this morning 22/11. Scheduled to operate VA401 ADL-SYD at 6am which was cancelled, replaced with VA9921... a 6am ADL-SYD flight.

I can't think why they would be cancelling the flight and replacing with a positioning presumably without pax?

 

[Harrison_133]

I can't think why they would be cancelling the flight and replacing with a positioning presumably without pax?

Cabin crew shortages, but the tech crew would have been available to position the aircraft back to Sydney so subsequent sectors aren't impacted.

 

[TheInsider]

Just a quick question on the on-time stats posted above, as i haven’t read the article in full….

Is it still the case that ‘on time’ = within 15 minutes? So in reality, the delays are far, far worse.

With the huge padding of schedules, the 1pm used to arrive in MEL at say 215. Now it can arrive at 240 and still be ‘on time’ (15 mins after the scheduled 225 arrival).

Airlines may not think 15 mins is a big deal, but you multiply that by 50 or 100 flights a year as a commuter and they’re just wasting pax time. That’s between 12 and 25 hours worth of delay.

Anything 15 min and over is counted as not on time for the govt stats.

Regardless of the flights being 15 min over, still doesn't mean that they can't arrive on time though.

Post automatically merged: Nov 22, 2023

Cabin crew shortages, but the tech crew would have been available to position the aircraft back to Sydney so subsequent sectors aren't impacted.

Could also be a maintenance issue preventing passengers.

 

[A321]

Could also be a maintenance issue preventing passengers.

Yes but then it immediately goes and takes pax on in Syd so probably more so crewing then

 

[justinbrett]

Just a quick question on the on-time stats posted above, as i haven’t read the article in full….

Is it still the case that ‘on time’ = within 15 minutes? So in reality, the delays are far, far worse.

With the huge padding of schedules, the 1pm used to arrive in MEL at say 215. Now it can arrive at 240 and still be ‘on time’ (15 mins after the scheduled 225 arrival).

Airlines may not think 15 mins is a big deal, but you multiply that by 50 or 100 flights a year as a commuter and they’re just wasting pax time. That’s between 12 and 25 hours worth of delay.

The scheduled times are gate to gate, not wheels up to wheels down.

SOP is around 10-20 minutes from gate to wheels up, and 5-10 minutes from wheels down to gate (varies by company and by airport, but these are fairly standard figures). You'll then have standard block time (which includes these gate-runway times) by route, which account for seasonal winds etc, but not a specific forecast on a given day.

The standard block time for SYD-MEL (on QF and VA) is 1:35. This is the figure airlines will use for scheduling. Of that block time, it's ~1:15 flight time for a 737. Now on a given day winds might be good and the flight time might only be 1:00, but they don't adjust the schedules to specific wind forecasts.

So it's really not a huge padding of schedules, and really if the aircraft is at the gate by the scheduled arrival time, it's not late, even if you think it took 20 minutes longer than it should have.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

The scheduled times are gate to gate, not wheels up to wheels down.

SOP is around 10-20 minutes from gate to wheels up, and 5-10 minutes from wheels down to gate (varies by company and by airport, but these are fairly standard figures). You'll then have standard block time (which includes these gate-runway times) by route, which account for seasonal winds etc, but not a specific forecast on a given day.

The standard block time for SYD-MEL (on QF and VA) is 1:35. This is the figure airlines will use for scheduling. Of that block time, it's ~1:15 flight time for a 737. Now on a given day winds might be good and the flight time might only be 1:00, but they don't adjust the schedules to specific wind forecasts.

So it's really not a huge padding of schedules, and really if the aircraft is at the gate by the scheduled arrival time, it's not late, even if you think it took 20 minutes longer than it should have.

Correct, it is gate to gate.

Even in your example above if we take a SYD-MEL… 20 mins gate to wheels up, 1.15 flight time… that leaves zero time for taxi on arrival. So not looking great for time keeping.

Plus the claimed ‘30 minute turnaround’ is never that on VA. It’s always seems to be around an hour. It might be 30 minutes till they start boarding… never until they’re leaving the gate.

Block times keep creeping up… used to be 1:20, now 1:35. If we take the times in your example above maybe airlines should realistically be blocking at 1:45 during peak times.

 

[justinbrett]

Correct, it is gate to gate.

Even in your example above if we take a SYD-MEL… 20 mins gate to wheels up, 1.15 flight time… that leaves zero time for taxi on arrival. So not looking great for time keeping.

Plus the claimed ‘30 minute turnaround’ is never that on VA. It’s always seems to be around an hour. It might be 30 minutes till they start boarding… never until they’re leaving the gate.

Block times keep creeping up… used to be 1:20, now 1:35. If we take the times in your example above maybe airlines should realistically be blocking at 1:45 during peak times.

They'd probably be using something like 15 minutes on departure and 5 minutes on arrival.

I don't know how they were ever 1:20 (and I don't doubt they were). But perhaps that was in an era with longer turnaround times and less OTP reporting.

Still my point remains, it's not excessive padding, it's realistic. If anything there should be more padding. I feel like US domestic flights have a lot more padding.

 

[ramboflyer]

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In October we had a 2 week holiday in Airlie Beach, About a week before we were due to leave home our return VA flight from BNE - MEL (2nd of 3 legs) was cancelled. Virgin booked us on flights that meant an overnight stay in Melbourne. Rather than fly over 2 days we decided to add 2 more nights (the soonest we could get the same 3 flights) back to HBA. Our choice. On the day we were due to fly home I received a text message at 3.30am to say the same flight had been cancelled and we were booked onto the 2 leg late into Sydney overnight and early out. It was a no brainer to stay yet another night where we were.
We put a claim in for compensation which was paid without any issue. I suspect it was cheaper for Virgin than putting us up in Sydney and the associated costs of that.

 

[Portsoft]

Flying PER -SYD on the 23-12.. hoping ..

 

[quick_dry]

My VA flight this afternoon ex SYD cancelled due to crew shortage.

that day was a mess up from the get-go.

I had HBA-MEL-SYD starting from 6:35am, and by the time I reached MEL they'd already had one MEL-SYD canned due to crew issues, and a second MEL-SYD canned with mechanical issues.

 

[jakeseven7]

that day was a mess up from the get-go.

I had HBA-MEL-SYD starting from 6:35am, and by the time I reached MEL they'd already had one MEL-SYD canned due to crew issues, and a second MEL-SYD canned with mechanical issues.

I was flying BNE/SYD/MEL - first leg cancelled and then when I was in Sydney (late for my personal event!) return leg cancelled, rebooked onto flight 2 hours later, then that flight was cancelled….

They didn’t give any reasons for the cancellations, they’ll normally say something for delays.

 

[Saab34]

1 in 3 flights before 930 this morning ex SYD cancelled.

I was reading about someone yesterday arvo who went BNE-MEL, cancelled so routes via Sydney. SYD-MEL cancelled so overnighted and out on SYD-CBR-MEL this morning. SYD-CBR cancelled so now put via Adelaide will arrival this evening.