When long-haul travel is longer than necessary

Flying from Dallas to Sydney takes a long enough time. Extending that time can be a pain.

It’s much better for pilots to plan to arrive early and take any delay in the air by slowing down. Picture: iStock.

Last Friday, I arrived back in Sydney on Qantas QF8 from Dallas. The scheduled departure out of Dallas was 22.25 Wednesday night, arriving in Sydney on Friday at 6.25am. This time of 17 hours includes ground taxi time in Dallas and Sydney.

I have done this particular flight over and back about six times as the CAE simulator centre for yearly pilot corporate jet renewals is in Dallas.

The QF7 flight over was about 15 hours and after watching four movies and snatches of fitful sleep came the hassle of getting through immigration which, with this huge airport, is time consuming because of the great number of people waiting to be processed.

The longer QF8 scheduled block time of 17 hours is due to the westerly headwinds.

After parking myself in QF8 A380 row 54 of cattle class at 22.15pm, I perked up when the captain made his customary passenger address to welcome us on board with what appeared to be an on-time departure and light headwinds, which meant a flight time of only 15 hours and 50 minutes.

However, my jaw dropped as he then said because we had a slot time into Sydney for the 6.25am arrival, it would mean arriving early so we would take the delay sitting at the gate with the APU (auxiliary power unit) running for 40 minutes.

Having flown into Sydney internationally many times during the morning peak hour between 6am — when curfew ends — and 7am, with about 30 arrivals, I know that it is much better to plan to arrive early and take any delay in the air by slowing down, which also saves fuel.

Besides, there is also a 20-minute holding requirement into Sydney at that time. Flow control is such that some aircraft arrive late for their slot, so early aircraft get controlled by ATC into that slot.

Domestic flights even as far away as Perth for a Sydney destination are controlled through a ground delay program that assigns pilots an allowed off-blocks taxi time for departure.

I rang the National Operations Centre who confirmed that international flights are still not bound by this ground delay.

As expected we were slowed down by ATC and we had some holding and then a five-minute wait as our arrival gate was blocked by another aircraft. We arrived at the gate in Sydney exactly 40 minutes late at 7.05am.

This meant my skinny derrière was numb from 17 hours and 50 minutes of seat time.

The A380 is a magnificent aircraft, but I do not find the economy seats very comfortable.

Qantas may be the safest airline in the world, with great cabin crew and no complaints with the service or food, but a needless late arrival based on pilot misjudgment seems silly.

As an aside, with the back of the queue situation due to our late arrival and the immigration hall swamped with passengers from earlier arrivals, the processing time and baggage collection really dragged out. Sydney terminal was hardly coping and some QF8 cabin crew were still at the baggage carousel waiting for their crew bags at 8.45am.

Emirates always ensured that tagged crew bags were first off and ready for collection as a group. It is important that delays do not eat into crew rest duty times.

Byron Bailey is a former RAAF fighter jet pilot and flew B777s as an airline captain.