a bristolian,
Yes, well done - yet again...........
I always appreciate your snippets...........anything else in the offing you can give us a clue about?
birdscarer,
I noticed that elsewhere in this message board you have taken to task a poster who does seem to like to focus on BRS’s perceived reputation as an airport that has to divert many inbound flights because of weather.
As is often the case in many fields, perception and reality are not the same.
I have looked at CAA stats for 2006 and list below the ‘top’ UK ten airports (leaving aside the London ones) for diversions of inbound aircraft to other airports:
BRS 83, SOU 70, BHX 57, LBA 53, CWL 44, LPL 39, BFS 36, PLH, NQY and MAN 39.
Although BRS is at the top of this ‘league’, when taking into account numbers of landings, it is not as bad as some other airports that are rarely mentioned in the context of diversions; of course, BRS does have Cat III capability on its westerly runway so that has undoubtedly helped to reduce diversions to a considerable degree.
BRS’s 83 diversions went respectively to BHX (27), EXT (25), CWL (24), LGW (2), LPL (2), EMA (2) and MAN (1).
The 2005 figures for BRS are slightly better with 67 diversions and this year so far shows a broadly similar pattern, if the January figures are ignored when so many flights went elsewhere because of the runway problems.
In 2006 BRS had 49 flights diverted to it from other airports, viz CWL (25), NQY (11), SOU (7), BHD (1), BHX (1), BOH (1), EXT (1), LHR (1) and ISC (1).
Interestingly, BRS and CWL (in whose thread you highlighted the matter) sent almost the same number of diversions to each other in 2006.
I realise that not all diversions are weather-related but probably the majority are.