Why's VS019 LHR to SFO so late so often recently?

Why's VS019 LHR to SFO so late so often recently?

We're on this flight on Friday week (4th April) so have been keeping an eye on it, and the record of timeliness for take-off and landing for the past couple of weeks has been pretty depressing - 3.5 hours late taking off being the worst, but yesterday again was 1.5 hours late. Lucky if 50% of the time there isn't a substantial delay.

Is there a reason for this?

We're going to be tired enough landing and having a 2 hour drive as it is, without being hours and hours late

D-UK

I may have not kept an eye on it as closely as you ... I was dropping folks off at SFO on Saturday, and VS was fime minutes early, am flying this Friday and checked again just now, again 10 mins early. That's not to say you aren't right. I don't have historicals for the route going back years. I do know this winter they have a longer turnaround time at SF, 3.5 hours, which means the flight can absorb a 1.5hr delay without any problems, and still leave SFO on time. This could impact how some decisions are made, though I doubt it.

I don't think there is likely to be anything more than 'leaving Heathrow is a mess, and luck and timing does the rest'. I last flew out of LHR to SFO about a month ago, and had to deal with over half an hour late leaving the stand with one thing and another, followed by an interminable wait in line for takeoff behind lots of aircrafts. In some cases, we watched flights due to leave a half hour to an hour later than us, take off ahead of us having left the gate after us - like the 11:30am VS7 LA flight, which incidentally still has not left today ....

Specific to SFO, it is now the only route flown exclusively with 747s, of which there are far fewer than A340s, and this could be a factor. But really, if you go through the forum, you will see plenty of discussion on how tight an operation VS is running today, and how the smallest problem can have a domino effect on the schedule. Not to mention all the references to how crowded Heathrow is. I trust VS is not explicitly targeting SF for poor performance.

[Decker]

Expertflyer shows 68% leaving on time with an average delay for those that didn't of 32 mins.

I don't know over what period Expertflyer extracts its statistics (and I'm not paying to join just in order to find out!!) but it doesn't reflect what's happened over the last two weeks! However, the last two days have been basically timely - let's hope it keeps up [y]

It could be that over the last few weeks/months the SF flights departure times have changed on some days. I have operated several SF flights lately and some have had me landing back into LHR at 1030 1130 and 1230. Check the timetable and see if this is what maybe causing you to think its late.

I know fromt he 27th March they all go back to the same times.

I think the VS19 can get knock-on delays from issues in the New York area the previous day.

The only flights the 744 works into LHR in the morning which arrive early enough to be turned for VS19 are the VS46 (JFK) and VS2 (EWR), at a push the VS10 could be turned to work the 19.

Therefore if there have been weather related delays in the North Eastern US, these manifest themselves as outbound delays ex-LHR the next day.

Mike

[Neil]

Originally posted by mike-smashing
Therefore if there have been weather related delays in the North Eastern US, these manifest themselves as outbound delays ex-LHR the next day.

And we all know how often that occurs. I guess it doesn't have to be weather related either, the amount of delays that must be picked up by the stupidly long taxing that happens almost daily after 6pm at JFK will cause plenty a delay I imagine too.