In all fairness, I think ML is ‘usually’ the quickest at departures. I routinely get a clearance to line up and depart with traffic at 3 miles. SY comes second with about 3-5 miles and BN the worst with a mighty dash at 5-7 miles and we sit there for another 3 minutes waiting……and waiting…..and waaaaaiiting for it to arrive………..

Don't beleive everything you are told, Melbourne say traffic within x miles, when it's actually further out, rarely is the separation less than 4-5 miles between arrivals.

What is the staffing like in the tower? Are they short like seemingly everywhere else or is it normally fully staffed?

The bloke is an imbecile, surrounded by yes men and women. That airline management are doing nothing about him, i.e. insisting on some sort of performance criteria is baffling. I would suggest that they're staying quiet should their own 'performance' be brought under the microscope.

United Airlines are saying they've had their best ever year, now that is saying something. Aircraft orders and deliveries are staggering, recruitment is hammering. Yet good ole Australia will sit around, making hammering staff on conditions a priority, rather parking jets than getting them in the air making money.

Just take a look at United's flights out of Australia and tell me who our national airline is.

If you don't see how much of a joke this country's airline/aviation industry is then you're a bit dim.

For August, there were around 410 return flights between Australia and the US - United operated 113 (27.6 percent) of those with an average LF of 75.4 percent; the QF group operated 213 (52.0 percent) with an average LF of 82.0 percent.

In terms of pax, again for August, there were in aggregate something like 134,059 pax moved between the two countries - United carried 47,218 (35.2 percent); the QF group carried 89,013 (66.4 percent).

They had the foresight to build terminal four with a lot of shopping and parking. Best shopping and parking ever. Who needs a runway or railway.

TCAS is pretty close and visually I think I can tell what’s about 3 miles and what’s 5 after thirty years. And quite routinely I’m about 1000’ when a ‘TO’ clearance is issued to someone on the ground. But in any case, I think there is room for improvement everywhere. I watched a company aircraft piss around when told ‘line up be ready immediately’ and cause a go round a few years ago. A controller will only be burnt that way once………..

Spot on! The mini backtrack on 16/34 is also back from a few select players…. That really helps the next aircraft.

A frequent contributor to this topic over many, many years has said that the primary cause of the problem is: lack of concrete. That's short hand for not enough runway, not enough aircraft gates and not enough aircraft parking area. The gist of their point is that no amount of air traffic control can cure a lack of concrete.

You can build as many runways as you like but, at the end of the day an airport's "capacity" will be determined by the ability of the surrounding airspace (and those who "manage" it ) to deliver aircraft to those runways and accept aircraft departing from them. And that other stuff LB mentioned.

Gne

Just put all the extra concrete in G - like Ballina - and job done! :E

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???

And where do you suggest we do that at Melbourne?

it was a south easterly - too much tailwind on 27. We’re constrained by the no more than 5kt on a dry runway, any at all on a wet runway….maybe the airlines should push for this to be changed. We are all for it!

if anything we might tell you the traffic is closer than it is to get you (not you personally) to hurry up. There is such a large variation of how quickly or not different airlines (even individual pilots) line up and get going. We have to work with the lowest common denominator.

Any pilot who can read their TCAS and knows that 3 degrees is 320’/Nm isn’t going to be suckered into thinking that the little white icon at +13 is 3 miles out. 😁

so why has someone suggested that the traffic is further out? How does that help ATC?

Not sure what you mean sorry. Just saying there’s no point you telling me traffic is at 3 miles to get me to hurry up when I can see from its profile on TCAS that it’s further out. 🤷‍♂️

I’m not saying we’d say 3 when it’s 5 - more like 2.5 when it’s 3. On another point raised here we will word number one for an immediate departure hoping to get the second one away in the same gap. Doesn’t often happen. I know “immediate” means line up and take off without stopping but it seems some guys just like to admire the view.