Originally Posted by
Vokes55
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.
You assume correctly Vokes, it is to permit scheduled runway maintenance on 26L and it does cause disruption as it can take between 10-20mins to switch from L to R, sometimes causing air holding and thereafter decreasing the landing rate due approach spacing requirements, particularly if there are heavies landing at that time on 26R which require a large gap. Those holding delays can also result in ground delays. Usual closure periods of 26L range from times between 2200utc and 0500utc. depending on time of year. NOTAM showing exact times/dates are available from multiple sources using Google.
Not wanting to get too involved in the above disagreement, those figures above look a fair assessment to me based upon data I see which is not in the public domain, however I believe even last week at one of the daily Government press conferences the figure of 18K was confirmed for passengers passing through LHR each day when a TV commentator/journalist questioned why the number was so high.