Originally Posted by
ash666
I flew into AMS on Tuesday in very dense fog with no problems while it sounds chaos at LHR.
Does AMS have any extra landing aids compared to LHR?
Yes, AMS by contrast does not have an absolutely saturated (in good weather) runway arrangement fitted into a postage stamp sized area (compared to Amsterdam).
Heathrow in good weather can handle 45 arrivals an hour at maximum (and the equivalent departures). And airlines schedule at 99% of this rate all day long. Along comes poor weather, Heathrow's landing aids are fine, best in Europe, but you need extra spacing between aircraft for this at any airport, it's just that at Heathrow things then don't fit any more. That's why you get "weather cancellations" while a steady stream of aircraft are arriving and departing all the time.