Late??

A bit of a random question here but i was wondering. I live directly under the flight path into glasgow airport and for the past week or so the flight from dubai, EK025 i think, has been late everyday. It has ranged from 10 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes late. Is there a reason for this, like is it common for flights leaving dubai to be late?

sorry if you feel the question is stupid

Departure and arrival times are really a guide [}:)]

Though in reality, there are many things that determine whether a flight meets its scheduled departure or arrival time, think only about how may services need to be on time to equip the flight (crew, food, cleaning, fuel, etc.) and if one is late then that causes an effect. Also, the arriving flight might be late, or a passenger e.g. a connecting passenger, or probably hundreds of reasons. When in flight the headwinds might be stronger than usual, or turbulence causes a detour. On the ground there might be congestion and indeed in the air. In reality there are multiple reasons and 10 minutes or a 'little' more on a 7/8 hour flight really is neither here nor there.

That said, I have noticed a lot of work on the ground at DXB of late and my flights have generally been later than before. So that might explain it.

I flew back to UK from Dubai on Monday and we left on time but arrived about 50 minutes late, because of strong headwinds (over 200mph at one point, according to i-map). It may be that late arrival of the Emirates flights all this week is for the same reason.

Best wishes

David

It's the time of year for fantastically strong jetstreams.

Speeds in excess of 200kts have been reported across the Pacific, which have caused some Trans-Pacific flights (such as SFO-SIN) to make tech stops for more gas (usually in HKG or TPE), because the headwinds put the destination beyond the endurance of the aircraft.

Because these tech stops would also put the crews out of hours, they are often pre-orchestrated even before the plane departs, because of the need to have replacement crew available at the tech stop airport.

Many airlines build at least 30 minutes extra into their schedules for an average westbound flight this time of year.

Cheers,
Mike