Originally Posted by
gilesdavies
Talking of ATC in the London area, I have noticed on the Flight Radar 24 app, over the last year a far higher number of flights into Luton are completely avoiding the London area especially on their approach into LTN...
Any flights originating east of France seem to be kept away from French airspace and purposely funnelled over Belgium and the Netherlands, then over the southern North Sea and they don't seem to make landfall over the UK anywhere south of North Essex, usually around the Harwich to Ipswich area. Where Previously flights would approach from Kent and fly around the London area.
Flights to/from Spain, the Canarys and Portugal seem to be routed out towards to Oxfordshire and leave/enter UK airspace around the Isle of Wight.
Flights that do come over London from the south seem to be kept a lot higher and fly north of the airport to the likes of St Neots, Bedford and Biggleswade to around 10,000ft and then start the final decent from these areas.
Flew MAD-LTN last night and did almost this exact routing. The airports expansion inevitably means more holding over the Letchworth area - we did two circuits of the race track yesterday, but seems to be a common occurrence in the last year or two.