F15,
The number of deparures from the West Side are not by far not towards BHX's capacity issues. Yes crossing helps - but how many occasions are there departures sitting at 'F' awaiting backtrack? Occasionally, but rarely.
Yes I agree that the gap between R/W and 'E' does not allow an ICAO defined RET. However a much shallower angle was initially planned which would have served much better purpose fro exit speeds. I was at the BIA management briefing when they announced the change to 'C' - for the reasons I stated.
Simultanious operations are not just a U.S. thing - we have LHR just down the road which could, and occasionally under special conditions does operate such approaches. But why doesn't it do so as a matter of course (T4's could all land south side for example....). The answer is quite simple - it's a well proven fact that maximum capacity is gained from operating dual runways in single mode operation.
A wide spaced long runway WAS an option of the governments white paper options for BHX. The airport themselves rejected this and proposed the 2000m, wide spaced runway as their solution to solving local objections. Whilst this is applaudable in many ways, it doesn't necessarily make it the RIGHT decision for the best operation of the airport if it really wishes to maximise capacity. Having a second runway, that under normal operations many aircraft don't wish to use, is simply operational folly I.M.H.O.
I'm not against a second runway (I'd love to see all us operators expand at the airport!), I'm purely saying that if the necessary supporting infrastructure was provided for the current one, there would be far more capacity available than at present. Before having a second runway I believe we should maximise what we can do with the current one, and secondly, when/if we have a second runway, build one that allows MAXIMUM future operational potential/benefit.
30W