Rutankrd....Interesting viewpoint. Not sure I'd agree with you. Ok, it slackens off inbound after 2145, but bear in mind that those that do arrive at that time and plan to fly out again are very often pushed for time when it comes to getting out of LHR before the night noise period!
xyz_pilot,
We usually do about 40-45 arrivals per hour. If the traffic mix is right, we can get up past 50 departures per hour.
Iceman51,
Mixed mode operations will not work at the moment, for many reasons. A few of them.....
Firstly, there are simply not enough stands to park the extra 20% inbounds on.
You either approach it one of two ways.......all T2 and T4 traffic uses the southerly runway, and T1 and T3 use the northerly runway, which makes ground just about manageable, but what happens when a southbound departs 27R followed by a northbound off 27L? To make that work we'd have to fire them out on headings and get rid of the incredibly politically sensitive Standard Instrument Departures that include minimum noise routes. And also I can't imagine our radar guys would look forward to getting a/c approaching from the south onto the northerly ILS through those a/c approaching from the north going for the southerly ILS. That sort of stuff makes you grow old very quickly.
The other method is to have anything approaching from, and departing to, the north use the northerly runway, and a/c approaching from, and departing to, the south use the southerly runway. In that case, I reckon it'll be about twenty minutes before all the taxiways grind to a halt because we simply don't have enough concrete.
approaching aircraft should benefit not only from a bigger distance between them but also from an additional lateral separation
The distance between them on the ILS will of course increase to about 6 miles in trail, but don't forget you have to get a departure away in that gap......also, they'd still only be three miles away from the aircraft who's on the other runway's ILS.