le pingouin you said
You might be able to nail the fix time to 10 seconds from a 1000 miles out, fantastic. But it just doesn't work well in the real world when there are more than a few aircraft in the sky.
I said
Australia nor Melbourne, are the only airports in the word that suffer from these problems
meaning plenty of places there are more than a few aircraft in the sky and don't have the issues Melbourne does!
I'm not so sure Sydney gets
vectored all over the sky, 250 knot descent?
as you put it. Yes it does happen, particularly during the 6-9am period, but not all day and generally less holding than Melbourne.
There seems to be something unusually bad about the Melbourne system, from sequencing to airborne delays often when there are few aircraft in the TMA. I don't know exactly what it is nor do I point the finger at someone making it that way, however there's plenty of feedback here to support that there IS a problem.