UAL839 this morning
 

UAL839 departing for Melbourne. After the heavy fog, the real UAL839 diverted to Brisbane after 2 missed approaches. The aircraft that operated UAL863 managed to land and operated UAL839 while the real UAL839 was in Brisbane. Due to only having Melbourne bound passengers from one United aircraft, it must have been very light. It departed 34L, being well off the ground before General Holmes Drive.

Attachment 1673

Pretty normal for the Melbourne flight to get airborne in just over 1000m of runway. I reckon the flight crew must love it too with all that power and no weight

Most mornings there's a QF744 positioning flight to Avalon (IIRC) which departs not long after the UA flight, both directly over my place when using 34L, rather than the track a couple of suburbs north. A lightly loaded 744 is a rocket ship!!

What's the load normally like on the SYD-MEL-SYD sectors?? And how does the crewing work for it, i.e. does UA have a permanent SYD-based crew just to operate the tag sector?

They may do it, similar to how EK use to do the SYD-AKL sector (DXB-SYD rest SYD-AKL-SYD rest SYD-DXB) EK now have an overnight rest in AKL...

So, in the UA example, it may be something like SFO/LAX-SYD; overnight in SYD. SYD-MEL-SYD overnight in SYD, then the following day fly out to LAX?SFO...