You think the distance to be flown to Oz, therefore the max weight take-off near limits might have something to do with it!
I am a little suprised by the 744, after all, they are on overtime!
Originally Posted by
oicur12.again
A recent event here in the US highlighted to me the difference between ozmates and the rest of the world maybe?
This is merely an observation, not a criticism; I see both sides of the story on this issue.
We had just landed in LAX where the wind on the ATIS was a light westerly of several knots, typical Socally evening.
The actual wind on final to touchdown was a northerly of 30 knots, all crosswind and VERY rare for LAX. The skipper was driving and greased it on, no problem.
We parked at the gate turning around to then push east on our redeye and I had left ground freq monitored for some reason.
The wind strength had not abated but become slightly easterly in direction resulting in about . . . . 3-4 knots tailwind component. The ATIS had been updated to reflect this.
First up, a Virgin Oz 777 bound for SYD called up and advised that owing to the slight tailwind component, they would be requiring an easterly departure. The ground controller after several confirmations and explanations then agreed that an easterly departure was required by Virgin however the delay would be very long, maybe over an hour from memory.
It appears that the Virgin crew twiddled the numbers and found that the rig could actually get airborne to the west with 3-4 knots up the date and off they went.
Then came the Qantas 744 bound for oz. Same deal, same request, same response by ground. They too discovered that 3-4 knots of tailwind is preferable to hours of delay and off they went.
I just found it so striking that of the huge number of departures that evening during our turnaround and during the time of the Virgin/Qantas conversation, dozens of other long haul wide bodies headed off with the tailwind component as advertised without so much as a peep from the crew.
As for ex blue shirters, I am one and yes there is a lot of “this is how we did it in AN”. But guess what, that comes from every large group of pilots following mass migration from airline to airline. I have heard the same from pilots ex Braniff, Monarch, Midlands, USAir, Frontier etc.