Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
As things stand, this is certainly the plan, with the currently estimated touchdown time of 23:40 GMT. So that suggests that G-EUYN will pushback from ZRH about 23:00 hrs CET. Looking at the current workload. Because the aircraft is taxiing in LHR I don't see much scope for improving this, given the arrival into ZRH will be about 22:20 or so. This is all provided that the crew are within their working hours and I have no insight into that.
Thanks Karfa and CWS ! I just thought I would update on what happened in the end.
BA 718 arrived in ZRH about 2236 after a slight detour and a couple of loops around the Swiss countryside.
Boarding started at 2255. The flight was totally full due to 2 previous cancellations. We overheard that the flight (BA719) had a hard pushback limit of 2335 if we were to take off. We eventually took off at 2341 and arrived at Terminal 5 B gates at 0004 well after any other late arrivals. There were still lots of staff around and everything was operational including the shuttle train.
I had understood that ZRH had a hard curfew for departures at 2330 but maybe I was wrong as our 2341 take-off was followed by 2 LX services to HKG and JNB who were taxiing behind us.
T5 Passport Control was empty and our luggage was already at the carousel when we got there. We were home in North London in bed within 90 mins of touch-down.
Interestingly, the crew said the BA718 was lack of flight crew not weather-related. Some of them were called in from standby. The flight was on Gate Open for 2 hours at T5 B32 before it eventually started to board.
The crew were amazing and made the flight happen by being very pro-active in stowing bags quickly and getting seated.
I am not sure how it is decided that some flights can land late at LHR or can take-off late from ZRH but I am very glad they did so last night !
Thanks as always for all the support !