Originally Posted by
southern duel
Night flights at heathrow are restricted. Cargo flights unless carrying livestock and maintenance flights are banned until 06:01 local time.
This will explain why no slot is available from LHR. Slots at 06.01 to 07.00 are quite heavily utilised with departures already.
We must be talkng about a different Heathrow.
Night flights at heathrow are restricted.
Yes, as discussed above, there is a Night Quota, but that has sufficient headroom to allow ad-hoc flights without breaching the limit.
Cargo flights unless carrying livestock and maintenance flights are banned until 06:01 local time.
This will explain why no slot is available from LHR.
Positioning flights to/from maintenance before 06:00 are unusual, but not unknown. The Night Quota restrictions don't make any distinction between those and passenger flights.
Slots at 06.01 to 07.00 are quite heavily utilised with departures already.
No, there are typically only about a dozen takeoffs before 07:00 (and half that number on Sundays), compared to around 45 departures per hour during most of the day.