Thanks to Roverman for the update.
How often is 05L in use during LVPs?
Precisely Scottie - how often are we in LVP on 05 and how many additional delays/ diversions away could we expect? Very few if any I reckon. I think Adola 69 has greatly overestimated the effects of the loss of JB in LVP in his "We're all doomed Cpt Mainwaring" style post.
Surely the greater impact of losing JB will be felt when we are on single runway operation on 05L in the lunchtime or evening periods. The 1200 -1500 period can get very busy for movements and this will further reduce the single runway capability which is already less on 05L than 23R due to less RETs - er well none now - and less holding space to sequence departures efficiently.
You can only declare runway capacity as a single figure and I believe this is done on the capability in the 23 direction which is more often in use - and would be a higher figure anyway. So when MAN is on 05L single runway, for any given flow of traffic, the likelyhood/magnitude of delay was always higher anyway and the loss of JB will exacerbate this.
So some questions
A far more important issue to sort out is getting approvals for dual runway LVP operation. What is the state of play with this? To go down from a declared two runway capacity of 60/hour or whatever to single runway LVP (ops - 20 ish/hour?) is what causes lots of disruption. LVP in the mornings - the most likely time of day -causes huge amounts of delays for the first wave of departures and knocks on for the rest of the day.
In addition Roverman said
All-day use of 05R-23L will be introduced in the medium term, with 05R the primary arrival runway on 'easterlies'
How long is the medium term? Will the lunchtime gap ever be filled with movement totals on the decline as there is a cost implication of filling it in?
I suppose this is the wider dilemma - can the Airport justify additional expenditure on this (and other infrastructure projects) with movement and passenger numbers falling? Filling this gap requires additional controllers to be recruited, trained and validated. Meanwhile, the bigger projects take some time to plan and deliver -in some case years - whilst the industry changes much more rapidly and airlines can add/subtract capacity relatively quickly. It's a very risky business out there, especially for airport investments.
Suzeman