Originally Posted by
GeeRam
I thought landing on 05R were stopped by early 1981, because of the starting of the building of Terminal 4, with any 05R landings being far too close to the works and site boundary of the new T4..?
I started on the T4 site in April '81 and there were no 05R landings in my time on site there between then and 1984 when I left.
Use of 05R continued for a while longer after 1981. I had just the one landing on 05R which was 9th December 1983 on board BA315 inbound from Paris CDG, operated by Tristar-1 G-BBAH. IIRC it was a very windy night and the total flight time for the flight that I recorded was one hour twenty-seven minutes as we held for some time due to the weather conditions and the use of runway 05R. It was a pleasant surprise to me when I realised it was a 05R approach as, at that time, I lived between Staines and Laleham and a very rare opportunity to fly directly over the area at low level. Sadly, it was dark so not the view it might have been dodging amongst the clouds on a daytime flight. Certainly by this time use of 05 was pretty unusual but if the weather conditions were "right" it was still in use at this time and I believe for a while longer.