Originally Posted by
ETOPS
Most mornings over Heathrow there is a queue of aircraft holding as they wait for the 0600 curfew to end. At times this builds from around 0545 and often involves 12 or so aircraft. I did it myself for a couple of decades so tried to calculate my "extra" carbon emisions based on average air holding times - I ran out of zeros on my calculator.
This holding is far more damaging than tankering and I did try to avoid it by slowing down en-route but arriving at the back of that queue still brought the dreaded " take up the hold at Lambourne - maintain FL 160 - at least 20 mins delay"..........
I second that, as can every BA pilot. Whenever I am challenged by a person who is anti LHR third runway, I tell them about the huge amount of fuel wasted in holding patterns. Generally, I get looked at in disbelief.
We should be doing much more as an industry, we should be highlighting the efficiencies we continue to make. We should emphasise the efficiency of moving (E.g.) 62,000 tonnes of payload from Mumbai to LHR in ten hours at a cost of about 72 tonnes of fuel. Compare that with a cruise ship I was on recently which carried 568 pax for 17 days burning 75 tonnes of Bunker oil per day while she was sailing. Aviation needs to blow its trumpet much more loudly, and emphasise that one pax’s fuel/mile in a B777-300ER is vastly more efficient than two pax’s fuel/mile using a typical family car in the UK.
Vasco (Retd BA 777s)