VB,
Runway utilisation is the name of the game at EGKK, ie we try and (ideally) have one aircraft movement on the runway every minute.
In order to achieve this we have to either be in what we call "one in one out" ie. 1 land , 1 departs, 1 lands, etc or if we don't have enough inbound traffic to do this we have to ensure that aircraft fly diverfing tracks after departure otherwise we have to separate them by five nautical miles which prevents us from having one a/c movement per minute.
To achieve good rwy use we sometime have to skip the queue with certain a/c at the holding point ie if we have 9 Southampton deps to go (SA after dep) and only 1 lambourne(right turn after dep) the chances are the Lam will be routed to an empty hold and then departed fairly quickly.
We also take into account tight slot times etc which sometimes alters the dep order. Vortex wake is another consideration.
As for a "speedbird" jumping the queue for that reason alone , all I can say is" Absolute B*%$ocks!!!".
Pilots who make comments like that should remember the time that they were allowed to go to Mike One because of a tight slot or an intersection dep because they were a "right turn out" and should rest assured that we do evreything for a reason and we try and help ALL companies to the best of our ability.
Hope this helps clarify things
VB. cheers for now,
Tig.