Air Canada and the waiting game
 

Morning All,
Just back from a short hop across to Sydney over the weekend, poor Air Canada it seems everytime im at SYD they are sitting waiting for a gate, is it a case of them running early, the plane at the gate being late or a combination of the two. Am well aware that gates are at a premium at that time of the morning and im sure they are not the only one's but they seem to be waiting there an awful lot on days when I head across to SYD. Mark

It happened to me with Air Canada just a couple of weeks ago.
The flight to Vancouver left Sydney an hour late due to the late arrival of the plane from Vancouver. We were told it was delayed due to storms on the Toronto-Vancouver leg of its trip.
When I caught the return Vancouver-Sydney flight, it left on time but arrived in Sydney a half hour earlier than the scheduled time and we then had to sit on the tarmac for 10 minutes waiting for a plane to back out of its (our) gate.
To top it off we had to wait at the gate while Quarantine boarded the plane and sprayed the overhead lockers with Mortein, and then wait another 5 minutes of so while the spray settled and the Quarantine guy signed off the plane.
The suitcases took forever to arrive and just trickled out the shute, but at least customs was just a breeze with the electronic passport.

Most of the time it's the company (AC) that wants to use that gate so the a/c waits until it's free to use.

Tim - the reason why it would of taken a while to get bags would be because they would've bug bombed the cargo holds as well...

It simply means the quarantine certificate had expired.

I just flew Air Canada. When we were leaving Sydney on the 15th of September we were waiting for an hour on the taxi way because there was too much traffic to depart. The pilot came over the intercom and said they were going to switch off engines to save fuel.We still made it to Vancouver half an hour early though despite leaving over an hour and a half late.

Arrived back on Monday morning. Left Vancouver on time but got held up by head wind and arrived late. Had to go through the spray process as well once we arrived. Sitting on the plane for another 15 mins when you just want to get off after a 15 hour flight.

I will write up a full trip report with photos and videos when i get some time. :)

Thanks for all the comments, makes sense why its always them sitting on the taxiway if they want to use the same gate (58 I think), never flown on them but just felt for all those as George said who sit there for 15 hours and them another 15-30 waiting for the gate.

I believe on Monday morning we were taken to gate 36 or something like that..not a gate in the 50's.

Sorry George it was at 58 on Wednesday so I assumed that was the normal one, my bad