Originally Posted by
bmaviscount
Why are they using R?
Were the limits airframe or weather?
Weather.
I assume they’ve been using 26R to allow maintenance/resurfacing to be done to the main runway during the shutdown. This regularly happens at night during the summer, but with the majority of based aircraft arriving back between 23-1 it actually causes a fair bit of disruption, as no runway is available for 10 minutes at a time when a lot of aircraft want to use it. Getting this work done now when it can be done for days straight, rather than just 5 hours per night subject to weather, is sensible.
Or it could’ve simply been to save money. With good weather and no heavy loaded departures, there’s no need for a runway with the length and equipment of 26L. A shorter runway with far fewer lights, ILS equipment switched off would save a fair bit on the lecky bill.