Qf802 Per-mel 08dec
The aircraft (VH-EBD "TRARALGON") was scheduled to depart at 1020, it arrived at 1000 so, no drama, new dep time of 1105, I think it is a good move to put the airbuses back on the intl routes as they struggle to turn them around on late arrivals, we didn't board till 1105, as they were still cleaning up till then. lets face it, qf can't even turn a 737 around in 30 mins let alone a 303 seat A330.
Anyway we spent the next 2 and a half hours on the aircraft while they sorted out this problem with the flaps. The Captain, surname Herberts, told us the computer was saying they needed a routine check even though they were working fine. we pushed back at 1302, after they had reset the whole aircraft systems.
I just wanted to say that they handled the delay really well, the Captain gave us regular updates and the cabin crew did all they could to inform us of what was going on. They brought us water and turned on the IFE to ease the boredom. You always get grumpy people who were going to miss connections and that, but the cabin crew handled them really well. We arrived in MEL around 2.5 hours late and en route the cc organised all the connecting peoples flight details for them and read them out on the PA.
I work for a DJ-associated company and normally fly DJ but just wanted to say i thought QF staff did a good job under trying circumstances...