Originally Posted by
V-Jet
Feel for anyone stuck in that.
Someone mentioned JFK taxi times.
AFAIK the record is still 8 hours taxi time. JFK-LAX taxi out with two crew, hit TOD limits before they made the runway, so it was time to return to the gate but then they were at the back of the return queue. That's quite a bit of taxi practice
JFK has real amounts of traffic and very bad weather including snow and ground deice requirements at times. As well as destination ports all around that suffer the same issues. Melbourne has some wind, rare fog and the odd mild thunderstorm. Most of the times you get excessive holding weather barely plays any part. Airspace wise, apart from the Essendon quadrant there is pretty much 300 degrees of open, unrestricted airspace for 100s of miles.
As said above above lack of runways, and poor airspace design and management is the problem. Theres also a distinct lack of coordination between ground, tower and departures, that leads to either no gaps for departures, or excessive gaps when no or few departures.
If you want a basic idea of lack of coordination, take LAHSO on 34. Then put all the domestic arrivals and departures on 27 and hold departures when the domestic arrivals could all be holding short while departures are unrestricted on 27. Why have most arrivals on 27 when LAHSO is in progress???