Merchant Venturer.
"...Bristol's short and high runway..."
C'mon now, it's hardly NBO or JNB is it!? I've got a 757 off that runway with a full pax load + 8 hour fuel load to Banjul,Gambia non-stop. Yes, I know the 75' is a beast as far as performance goes but Bristol's runway isn't that limiting due to it's 'Altitude'.
ChocksAwayUK.
As a 10 year old,many moons ago, and when 'The Bucket and Spade Brigade' were mere fledglings, I was a pax on a Dan Air BAC 1-11 and we had to 'Tech Stop' in Rimini on our way back from somewhere in the Med' purely and simply because the aircraft of the day could either carry all of the pax.+bags or all of the 'gas but not both,due primarily to either aircraft limitations or performance limitations 'imposed' by the airfield of departure. In our case it was an aircraft of limiting performance AND a very short runway AND very strong headwinds.
It is a perfectly normal, albeit, rare event these days as later generations of aircraft had more capacity to overcome these hurdles, however there could be any number of reasons why it has to be implemented. For example a major airline recently had a B777 flying from LHR to DXB that had to tech stop in FRA because he couldn't uplift any fuel in LHR due to a re-fuellers strike. It happens.
