mika911

They are still waiting in Auckland. 7pm departure to Sydney scheduled now.

cavemanzk

Looks like the passengers finally took of from AKL at 20:21on a new flight QF7008 operated by an 789. Flown in from BNE.

So does this mean QF has an a388 now stuck in Auckland?

DC9

It seems that the A380 departed AKL at 7.02pm (prior to the B789), with no passengers (due to cabin crew availability), for SYD, ETA at 8.07pm.

DownUnderFlyer

With that outcome they could have just stayed in NAN unless the passenger required treatment not available there for whatever reason.

number_6

It sounds like they took off from NAN destined for BNE but had to divert to AKL in-flight....bit of bad luck on winds most likely. As an aside, I recall that NAN had to be provisioned with some special ground handling equipment a decade ago to accomodate A380 as a diversion airport.

Blackcloud

Didn't you report that QFA380 were equipped with a tow bar, held in the hold, that could then be used at diversion airports if they were not equipped to handle A380 operations?

og

That’d be a pretty heavy weight penalty and I reckon the bean counters might say “why carry it, what could possibly go wrong”.

number_6

Wow, that was circa 2009 when A380 first entered service, and they did use to carry that tow bar in case of diversion to lots of non-A380 ready airports. Since then dozens of airports around the world without regular A380 service have added that capability so I would presume it is no longer carried. But lots of other ground handling equipment is needed apart from tow bar. NAN has seen a fair few visits by A380 over the years, sadly. None yet to PPG to my knowledge, but that will happen eventually Will be interesting when it does.

S_B

This is correct, I was on board also.

About 10hrs into the flight they announced f anyone had medical training to assist the crew. I'm not sure how I heard it as I was fast asleep otherwise. Then about an hour outside of Nadi I woke up. We were on the ground in Nadi for about an hour, and before departing the flight crew announced we would be going to Brisbane.
Then about 30mins in the air out of Nadi, they announced a diversion to AKL to stay within crew hours.

All passengers had to disembark, proceed through immigration/customs collect bags and await further instructions. As the flight was never supposed to go to AKL the electronic passport readers couldn't be used and all passengers were manually processed (I'm not sure how they would've handled any passengers who didn't have entry permits to NZ). After about 2hrs of landing in AKL they started processing passengers - effectively checking in again for the new flight QF7008 to SYD on a 787 that was being flown over. They did try to prioritise passengers who connections from SYD onto earlier direct flights from AKL (including putting them onto other carriers).

Initially we were told that QF7008 would depart AKL at 3pm, which became 5pm which became 7pm. The issue it seems was cabin crew. They were finally able to get a standby 787 crew together at AKL - It was the Australia Day Long weekend, so I imagine getting crew at short notice would've been difficult. WE finally made it into SYD about 9pm, 15hrs delayed.It was a long trip! but being stuck at AKL airport is better than sitting in the airplane for 8hrs as I've had on other delays.

DownUnderFlyer

Thanks for the report, S_B. I am glad you got back safely.

S_B

It was ok for me as a solo business traveler returning home for the weekend, I did feel bad for those with kids and particularly small kids. I afterwards found out the medical emergency was a passenger who had a heart attack, so I hope they had as positive an outcome as is possible under the circumstances.