BA15 SIN - SYD lands, finally (after making pretty line drawings on the map)
 

Was watching this flight as had relatives on board...

Very strong winds and gusting, and pretty bumpy, their messages said.. Only one runway open at 5am in SYD and facing in the wrong direction, so the Captain had to circle for a whole hour and landed pretty much bang on 6am from the North, when another runway opened...

Just out of interest - how much fuel will have been remaining, most likely, after an hour of circling? Clearly enough for it to be safe, but just wondered!

You feel for the people in Y, who left LHR 23 hours ago, and just desperately - desperately - want to get out of their seats!!!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d31db94112.png

There would likely be at least an hour or two of fuel on board when landing. CBR operates 24 hours a day and is an easy 20 minutes or so away, I imagine that would be the preferred diversion. I guess winds must have majorly shifted after departure from SIN, as usually BA would prefer a ground delay to the waste of fuel in an extended holding pattern.

The restrictions on early landing at SYD are well known. So while I agree with cpdc1030 that if the crew had known before departure that it would be impossible to land before 0600L, they might well have taken a ground delay at SIN, I wonder whether it's also possible that the crew took extra fuel on the basis that having to hold before landing at 0600L was a possibility but departed SIN in the hope that things would actually work out for a landing from the south. And while CBR would have been a reasonably close diversion field, it can pose some challenges (including weather) and MEL is commonly used by large aircraft diverting from SYD, so the aircraft may well also have had enough fuel to divert there rather than to CBR. At any rate, I'm sure that the aircraft had plenty of room for any extra fuel that the crew decided to carry; SIN-SYD is a short flight.

Singapore is a busy place at that time of night. They would have just uplifted extra fuel to account for an extended hold waiting for a more appropriate runway to open.

It's quite a sad state of affairs. I personally am not a member of the green lobby but all this inefficiency is disappointing. At the end of the day the only people paying for the higher fuel burn is going to be the passengers.

The OP is implying that the circling was due to winds/weather, however there is a hard curfew where the aircraft can't land before 6. So I'm surprised that the flight took off at the time they did. Maybe favourable winds meant an arrival much earlier than expected.

No, BA15 and QF2 have exemption to land after 0500LT as long as they use northerly runway (approach over sea). Due to turbulence on approach this morning, BA discontinued approach and then both BA & QF held until 0600 for end of curfew for landing to south (approach over city).





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It's a reasonable price to pay for having the airport so close to the city and population. The curfew allows some landings from over the ocean at that time , just no waking people up in the city at 5am

It is a commercial choice of BA to schedule to arrive at that time - it is fully aware of the drawbacks that go with the benefits of being one of the 1st aeroplanes to land in the morning

Wind at 0500 was southerly at 22 gusting 31 kts so probably over the 777 tailwind limit for this runway. BA's scheduled arrival time is 0510 and if there's any danger of arriving before 0500 they tend to hold on the ground in Singapore (which is a frequent occurrence and a bit of a pain after one has been hustled out of the lounge), and if it is likely that the northerly runway won't be suitable, they can of course carry ample fuel as this is a relatively short sector for the 777. It's far preferable to hold rather than to divert (esp to Canberra) if it's a curfew issue and Sydney ATC seem to be quite helpful in keeping first place in the queue for the full 0600 opening (look at FR24 for the late shove off approach of the JQ DRW arrival to clear the way for BA15 & QF2 this morning).

Haven't seen QF's proposed schedule for the non-stop from LHR but if similar to the present timings, it's going to be a tight fit between departing before the LHR night curfew and arriving after SYD opening time...


https://www.canberratimes.com.au/sto...omali-pirates/

I think Badgery's (planned to be H24) will eventually do quite well with scheduled flights, not just by the LCCs. West & North Sydney are the growth areas for the city and quite a lot of high tech firms have moved out that way. Will probably start with leisure destinations and then develop its own catchment area for business traffic. A bit like LGW's growth perhaps? Caveat of course is the waste of opening an airport before the surface transport links are in place.

Sounds like it would be easy to schedule to leave at 13:00 and arrive into Sydney at about 19:00 at this time of year for a fairly civilised departure and arrival time

Would I be right in thinking that the aircraft types in question (primarily 77W for BA, 388 for QF and SQ and possibly EK) would be unlikely to try to to land on 34R anyway, so whether or not SYD is formally operating a single runway at that time of the morning is beside the point.

But then there'll be the question of whether those are commercially viable times, given what's offered by the competition. While there are some people (including yourself) who like to spend two days and one night on a journey like this, airline scheduling suggests that more people prefer to spend two nights and one day - hence the evening departures from London and the morning arrivals at Sydney.