Parallel Runway Operation at Heathrow?
I am not sure if this is news. It appeared in the DTel yesterday, and has been picked up by some of the news services today.
"THE Government is being urged to back research into the system of take-offs and landings at Heathrow to cut delays and increase the number of destinations.
The Civil Aviation Authority wants an environmental study into introducing parallel runway operations at the airport, which could allow more than 200 extra flights a day.
Pressure on ministers to ease air congestion is intensifying, with British Airways forecasting that by 2010 Heathrow will be demoted to Europe's number seven airport if nothing is done.
The change would mean both the airport's runways being used for landings simultaneously, with take-offs slotted in on each strip between touchdowns. At present, one runway is used for incoming aircraft and the other for departures.
Many large American airports have parallel operations. With advances in airport landing and aircraft navigation technologies, the system is seen as a safe way to increase runway use.
Adoption of the arrangement at Heathrow could allow both runways to operate as efficiently as Gatwick's single runway, which manages 49 take-offs or landings an hour, the highest rate in Europe.
This would improve Heathrow's capacity by a sixth, about 210 aircraft slots a day. This is at least a third of the improvement that would come from an extra runway.
In advice to ministers, the CAA describes the potential gains from parallel operation as "very worthwhile in terms of delaying the need for airport capacity elsewhere to be brought on stream".
The Government forecasts that demand for air travel will rise from 170 million passengers a year at present to 229 million by 2005 and 333 million by 2015.
Three quarters of travellers use airports in the South-East, where no new runways have opened since the Second World War."