Silvia also pointed out winds and restrictive operations in SYD are hampering flights.
True for VA866, the 1700 hours down to MEL that took off at 2103 (B738 VH-IWX) and is shortly arriving at 2224 hours, 229 minutes late.
I was on VA866 last night and would like to ask a couple of questions that I got to think about during the 4 hour delay.
First a little background: I am only a VA Gold because of Family Pooling and the recent double Status Credit promotion, although I used to be a true 'road worrior' while based in Europe and in Asia so know a bit about delays. At least we were not loaded and then told of a 2 hour delay waiting for a landing slot.
VA, with a few exemptions, are a one plane fleet (B737-800) so, theoretically, the seat plan on every plane is the same (8 business, some Comfort X and the rest standard Y).
Weather delays are a fact of flying life so was expecting some delay yesterday but as the App was still showing an on-time departure and I had recieved no notifications, I was hopeful. In fact, I never recieved any notificaitons, including a gate change, and the App showed an on-time 1700 departure until around 1900. Surely it must be simple for a bit of code to be written to allow the App to be updated in near real time? FR24 was much more up-to-date.
When I arrived at the (very full) Lounge and hour or so before the scheduled departure, the board was still showing 1700 but FR24 showed VH-IWX was still incoming to BNE from PPP and had not been anywhere near SYD all day so not affected by their weather. Even when the board was updated, intitially to 1930, simple maths would show that the aircraft would not land until after then - it landed SYD at 1944 then there was a crew change.
I did not observe any passenger anger at the delay - maybe SYD pax are just used to long delays - but the lack of information in the lounge, at the gate or even after boarding was none existent. I could not hear any PA in the Lounge.
My question - Between 1700 and 2103 (when VA866 finally departed), there were 6 VA 737-800s scheduled to leave between 1715 and 1900 (although all delayed by various amounts of around an hour) that could have taken us to MEL sooner. I can understand on other routes there is not the same flexibility, but on the MEL-SYD-BNE triangle, do the schedulers think it okay to delay 150 or so pax for 4 hours rather than everyone for a lesser amount of time? We could have easily have been uploaded onto an earlier aircraft - catering should not be an issue as VA does not do special meals as far as I know.
I know VA would blame the weather yesterday but airlines should really have some obligation, like EU261, so they think about their customers as well as aircraft utilisation and crewing, as important as these are as they rebuild their business. (Rant over).
