The Problem at Bristol Airport

[late developer]

I've been reading the pro thread in R&N as it grows by the hour http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=257923 "Another Aircraft off the Runway at BRS."

There are some very experienced pilot views there that indicate that there are unquantified hazards with particularly slippery reconstructed bits of runway. It has been stated that there have been three incidents in just a few days. There are other candid views that indicate that some of the ensuing upset might be rather oriented towards keeping the airport open to avoid loss of income.

I notice from BRS arrivals webpage with some slight surprise that the airport continues to operate with BA, Easyjet, Ryanair flights amongst others which, to my mind - one frequently given to conjuring up picture analogies, is like pigeons still dropping in to my decoys and towards my gun.

I fully appreciate the commercial dilemma, but with no sign of difficult weather abating today I have to wonder from what I have read in R&N why BRS is still operating.

An apparently temporarily unsafe QEII M25 bridge was closed for a few hours yesterday evening. Nothing wants to land OR TAKE OFF on that of course, except maybe a pigeon or two. The cost of the inconvenience of the closure is borne by those sitting in the jams waiting for it to re-open. They still paid their tolls when it did of course.

Apart from the income effects then, why are apparently temporarily unsafe airports different?

BTW, decelerating aircraft touching down and skidding off the middle or the other end and getting a bit muddy is one thing, but the ability to get Effective Braking on tap is a much more essential requirement for TAKE-OFF safety, surely? Correct me if I am wrong but I haven't seen that raised as a particular problem, yet??

[PAXboy]

I'm not sure that this is the right forum for this question. If you want to ask are Pax happy about this - then ask it here, otherwise perhaps Questions or JB because we cannot answer your question.

If one took a generalised cynical view of British companies (which I do) then I would say that they will put profit first whilst pretending that safety is first. They do this for reasons I have bored readers with in other threads and will save for now.

I would take it as read that a commercial company will - nowadays - try to avoid regulations until brought up smart by a vigilant inspector, a doughty member of staff who will blow the whistle or a major prang. Three of the best examples are the Herald of Free Enterprise (6th March 1987) and the Kings Cross tube fire (18th November 1987). More recently, the Hatfield rail crash on 17th October 2000. All had been predicted by staff and the hazardous conditions were in place for some time.

I do not use BRS and have no experience of it and make no comment on them. However, looking at the UK as a whole it is probably only a matter of time before the airline industry falls to the same problem that has already caused death on the railways and seaways.

[MerchantVenturer]

I have travelled through BRS as a pax many hundreds of times during the past thirty years or so and continue to do so. Indeed, I have three return flights booked in the next two months so I have a considerable interest in the current happenings.

From a pax perspective I find using BRS to be usually a pleasant experience, in so far as using any airport can be so regarded.

It is now a victim of its own success and its terminal building, essentially that first mooted in 1993 when the airport's ten-year plan envisaged 2 million pax by 2003, was opened in 2000 when that figure had already been reached.

When Go arrived the following year (now absorbed by easyJet) passenger numbers increased at a phenomenal rate to the 5.7 million per annum currently carried. The terminal is at maximum capacity during the busy periods (occasionally slightly uncomfortably so) and the airport admits in its master plan that the current terminal can only service around 6 million pax per annum.

It has grand expansion plans. All this has led at least one pilot in the R & N thread to assert the airport has now gone beyond its operational capacity and this in itself impacts adversely on the safe operation of the airport.

The comments made by some airline pilots in the R & N thread about BRS are extremely alarming. One said the place should be closed forthwith; another that he would never allow his family to fly in or out except in good weather conditions; others expressed concerns to varying degrees.

The airport is undergoing a £20 million runway re-surfacing programme which is being carried out at night, although work has been suspended for the holiday period.

Reading the R & N thread it seems the work on the runway is mainly to blame for the area that appears to be at the root of the problems. Of course, until an enquiry reports its findings into the aircraft that left the runway this must be conjecture, but the evidence seems compelling.

However, other pilots appear to be saying that the runway has always been a difficult one to use, especially in adverse weather.

The weather of the past week or so has obviously exacerbated the situation: fog before Christmas and gales and heavy rain in recent days.

It seems from the R & N thread that a First Choice B 757 came within a gnat’s whisker of catastrophe when aborting a landing in high winds. The incident was witnessed by two airline pilots from different vantage points who described it in PPRuNe.

Presumably the controversial runway area was not to blame for this but it seems to highlight the difficulty of landing commercial aircraft at this airport in such conditions.

I believe the airport management has a duty of care to deal with the situation of the past days urgently and fully, and commercial considerations must take a back seat.

[fyrefli]

I have travelled through BRS as a pax many hundreds of times during the past thirty years or so and continue to do so. Indeed, I have three return flights booked in the next two months so I have a considerable interest in the current happenings.

From a pax perspective I find using BRS to be usually a pleasant experience, in so far as using any airport can be so regarded.

Yeah, I'd go along with that.

The airport is undergoing a £20 million runway re-surfacing programme which is being carried out at night, although work has been suspended for the holiday period.

Reading the R & N thread it seems the work on the runway is mainly to blame for the area that appears to be at the root of the problems. Of course, until an enquiry reports its findings into the aircraft that left the runway this must be conjecture, but the evidence seems compelling.

It seems increasingly questionnable whether this work has been properly planned - i.e. with due consideration for likely weather - and carried out.

However, other pilots appear to be saying that the runway has always been a difficult one to use, especially in adverse weather.

It has a dip in the middle, a very steep fall off at one end, is on a plateau between two deep valleys (exacerbating problems when the wind isn't "on" the runway) and is massively prone to fog.

As you allude to in the R&N thread, consideration was relatively recently given to developing Filton instead. I originally typed "serious consideration" but then, if it had been given "serious consideration" for all of five seconds, Lulsgate would not have been further developed. Instead, the usual congregation of short-sighted nimbys (my parents included, many of whose friends and relatives worked on Concorde, go figure) prevented Filton, which is a mile from the M4/M5 interchange and has its own railway line, for pity's sake, is far less prone to adverse weather etc., from being developed commercially.

The UK is useless at this sort of thing. On the pretence or delusion that these things don't have to go somewhere, we hamstring ourselves with half-baked compromises instead of having the guts to do things properly. We have completely lost our concept of the common good.

I like BIA but, having been privileged enough pre 9/11 to enjoy a ride on the flight deck all the way back from Faro to BRS and witnessed the effects of being really badly gusted at 50ft, I do tend to pay considerable attention to what's going on when coming in!

[late developer]

I'm not sure that this is the right forum for this question. If you want to ask are Pax happy about this - then ask it here,... That's why I introduced it. Things don't happen in civil aviation if SLF doesn't buy it. There is one apparently very experienced pilot who has actually said in the other thread that he would not allow members of his family to fly into or out of BRS in poor weather.

That's not just a personal preference. It is a professional judgement that BRS is unsafe in bad weather.

Because of the glorious history of Concorde and Bristol Filton (I have a fantastic photograph here on the wall of Concorde over Clifton) then mention has already been made of the differences between Lulsgate and Filton, Concorde being one of them.

My point for SLF to consider is based thus:
We know that Concorde could not have got in at Lulsgate for all sorts of reasons, but whilst we have it in our minds, let's just remember something of the Concorde disaster. Lots of discussion about how Concorde had already accelerated beyond the speed no return on the runway (V1) but how possibly, it might just have fared better had a totally against the grain pilot decision to abort take off at or above V1 had been made. It was an extreme Catch 22 and of course extremely sad.

Minimum Take Off distances and I think in some special airport cases V1, are of course dominated by braking distance calculated according to known conditions, in order to stay away frome the extremes of Catch 22.

So what do the 'official' minimum take off distances mean at BRS right now(and some V1 maybe)?

I'll tell you what I think they mean. I think at BRS today they might be just numbers on a piece of paper which are giving a seriously flawed representation of the mandatory figures required to ensure safe take off. I could be wrong of course, but no-one has said so yet.

In other words if an abort just below V1 was attempted by some of the kit taking off at BRS in bad weather right now then it would most likely end up very nasty. I am not qualified to say it would be inevitable but many PP PPRuNers might be...

So why are we debating it as if it is a general ill of some possible concern? It isn't. It is a specific ill of definite high concern. TODAY. RIGHT NOW!
So, fellow SLF, why are we buying it?

PS (Edit) The third 'unrelated' incident IS in fact almost certainly related because it reflects the continuing extreme challenge of putting down certain types at BRS in bad wind conditions right on the numbers or failing that to have to do a mandatory go-around. Many landings at many airports a day are less than ideal but the pilot usually has a few options to play with and can perfectly safely touchdown further along with plenty of runway to spare, rather than to bin it immediately as is obviously essential at BRS right now.

[MerchantVenturer]

I suppose the ultimate sanction that pax have is to decline to use the airport at all.

I have to say though that I see a dichotomy in that many experienced pilots have condemned the safety at BRS in the past day or two, yet in another thread in the Terms and Conditions MB I read recently that BRS is one of easyJet's most popular bases for pilots.

One could be forgiven for thinking that if BRS is inherently dangerous why would this be so?

I live just to the north of the approach to runway 27 near its 7-mile finals point and this afternoon the weather has been awful - strong sw winds and driving rain, yet the BRS website shows that 30-40 commercial aircraft have landed this afternoon and early evening with no diversions or cancellations posted. If 'my' weather was replicated around the airport itself the pilots' workload must have been intense - I take off my hat to them.

I said elsewhere that for many reasons Filton is now a non-starter - the boat was missed some time ago which is a very great shame.

The runway at Lulsgate has always seemed to be the airport's Achilles Heel and in its master plan the airport explores a range of options from doing nothing, through extending the runway by just 140 metres (the maximum extension that can be accommodated on airport land without the need for airport control of Felton Common, but the A 38 would still need to be lowered into a 150-metre tunnel) to extending it by 389 metres (still on airport land but airport control of a substantial part of Felton Common would be needed), to extending it even further onto the Common itself, which has been designated a Local Nature Reserve under the relevant Act of 1949.

The airport concludes that improved performance would be relatively small in comparison with the financial costs and the potential environmental impact.

It has therefore told the government that it does not intend to attempt to extend the runway under its current expansion proposals.

[late developer]

I suppose the ultimate sanction that pax have is to decline to use the airport at all.Yes but the sad fact is that pax do not have a clue that they may have bought a ticket to something possibly dangerous on a day like today.

...I read recently that BRS is one of easyJet's most popular bases for pilots.Yes well pilots will be pilots and they like to feel challenged and to perform well against odds, but evidently even they do not all know all the facts which means that they too may be attempting things which are dangerous on a day like today because the runway doesn't behave to the "book". (Although thank goodness it seems the main operators may have introduced limits of their own now for BRS which whilst undisclosed apart from one company imposing a more stringent crosswind limit, may make things a bit better I suppose until regulatory authority is imposed).

...this afternoon the weather has been awful - strong sw winds and driving rain, yet the BRS website shows that 30-40 commercial aircraft have landed this afternoon and early evening with no diversions or cancellations posted.....
....(BRS) told the government that it does not intend to attempt to extend the runway under its current expansion proposals.Yes and there is the crux of it. "The show must go on". The politics of airports like this must be as awful as the weather. I remember when Lulsgate was just a sleepy little field perched atop a very blowy hill with not much going on at all. Hats off to the local politicians and money men that steadily built it into something worthwhile years ago. But that was then. Now it's perhaps a mini-monster with its own inertia.

The other thread mentions Leeds Bradford as another difficult and questionnable airport. Over this side of the country we have LCY of course - pilots love it too - for the special challenge, I guess. Again, it is an operation constantly pushing the limits in the name of spectacular growth and achievement, and its contribution to local jobs and infrastructure, but everyone knows that one is hardly the right airport in the right place either. The current LCY Airport thread talks about interesting adventures in the fog recently when conditions were marginal. Generally speaking, the show there goes on too, without pax really understanding anything more than they can see, or feel from any bumps, or judge from their customer service experience in the terminal:ok:

Wasn't there a LCY-LBA service once? I see there is an LBA-BRS service. Double-whammies like that must be interesting on days like today:E