Originally Posted by
Ken Borough
London Gatwick is a single runway airport. It can handle 55 movements an hour. Does Sydney achieve anything like that when 25 is in use? I do note however that there were a handful of departures this morning from 34L.
Yes Ken Sydney does achieve low 50's movement rates when single runway operations is nominated. As you say there are a handful of 34L departures and these complicate things and result in a LOWER overall movement rate (as these aircraft need to cross RWY 25 on their taxi for DEP and then again on their DEP, and as these aircraft are HEAVY or SUPER then then is likely to be a further wake turbulence delay for the next RWY 25 DEP).
Comparing LGW and SYD is rather unfair as LGW has RET and terminals away from the runway and LGW have a more routine and regular flow of traffic. That is, LGW regularly do 55 per hour whereas SYD typically will do up to 45 arrivals on 34 parallels leading into a single runway, so there are a backlog of DEP (the arrivals that have already landed). SYD starts behind the 8-ball and then struggles through. Simple maths really.