Virgin Australia flight VOZ572 departed Perth at 23:46 (local) last night. It arrived in Sydney at 06:24 this am. Long, long flight? Yes and no. The time in Perth at the time of landing would have been only 03:24 but you lose three hours' worth of time zones running west to east. It's lots of fun flying east to west, though, as you leave at breakfast time and get there just in time for morning tea.

This probably isn't the most flattering picture for your first glimpse of Sydney from the west. Indeed it borders on being a post-apocalyptic one.

The aircraft concerned is an A330-200 (A330-243 variant), VH-XFD (named Bells Beach). It was delivered in April 2012 and was withdrawn from service on 19 March 2020. (An event that was probably pandemic-related.) As of August 2022 it has remained in storage at various locations aside from a brief period of being leased to a private company.

The plane is only 10.4 years old at the date of writing, which is still pretty young to be put out to pasture... but as of the date of writing air travel is a living, breathing, nightmarish debacle of cancelled flights, lost luggage, understaffed airports and airlines who are suddenly discovering "oh gee, those people we sacked when they needed their jobs most? They aren't lining up to come back!", and of course Alan Effing Joyce. Even if I had the freedom to travel at the moment, I'm not really sure that I'd want to. I'm sure I'm not the only one, so while I'm sure that Virgin would love to have its full fleet back in the air earning revenue, airlines and airports don't seem to be capable of managing the aircraft that are already in the air, much less more of them.