Thank you for the clarification - I was very curious that DL would deliberately park a 777-200LR for 27 hours at a remote aerodrome - especially since they only operate one flight a day (six times a week). Since there is such a limited DL presence in SYD I doubt there is any maintenance being performed on the aeroplane. I am not sure if this happened the previous week because I do not think DL41 flew LAX-SYD on Monday May 02 nor DL40 SYD-LAX on Wednesday May 04.
As for loads LAX-SYD..... I flew on a Tuesday earlier this month and saw every passenger in Economy had three seats on the UA787-9.
Originally Posted by
ashill
Virgin Australia makes the
weekly timetable easy to see for both VA- and DL-operated flights. Indeed, the DL flight LAX-SYD doesn't operate on Tuesdays (Thursday arrival) and SYD-LAX doesn't operate on Wednesdays.
I agree that that's an odd way to do it. They could skip the Tuesday LAX-SYD and the Thursday SYD-LAX and have normal ground time in SYD all six days the flight operates, but I guess Thursday is enough busier than Wednesday for SYD-LAX that it's worth leaving the plane in SYD for 27 hours.
(Alternatively, they could drop the Monday LAX-SYD, but again, Monday flights must be enough more desirable than Tuesday flights for this schedule to make sense.)
By July 7, the DL flight is back to daily according to the VA timetable.