The 'habit' very quickly will become 270kts for everything
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Won't become my habit. Its a sh1t idea. If a pilot wants to fly at 270 kts i'll try to accomodate him but he'll probably be asked to fly quicker if hes at the front. I won't impose an arbitary speed on aircraft just because someone has decided that its a good idea, i don't know what the ideal economy speed for a A319 or B747 is but i bet they're different and not 270kts. Let pilots fly the aircraft and i'll concentrate on keeping them apart.
Why can't the various center controllers sequence the traffic destined to EGLL with a good in-trail of 20NM then have the mid center sectors leading to the London LTMA reduce that to 10NM...? I know we do it here in the states alot and it seems like that's always never a problem. A lil delay vector here and there and everybody is sequenced with the correct in trail.
I'm just looking for an explanation, as I realize you guys have probably thought of that way before i was born and figured out it didn't work for one reason or another. I'm cruious why and what makes the TMA there such a complex airspace.
The TMA is so complex because of the number of airports within 60 miles of each other. There are 10 LTMA airports plus another 10 ish whose aircraft fly through the TMA's airspace.
The problem with trying to get LL inbounds in trail is all to do with the size of the UK. For example coming from the east (northern europe, eastern europe, far east, middle east and scandinavia) you have about 60 miles in which to stream the traffic and you very regularly get 6-8 at a time and another 4 very close behind, you can't get 10 miles in trail let alone 20. To do that MAAS would have to start streaming for us over northern europe and to be frank they are far to busy with their own problems to do that.
Also as the LTMA get attacked from at least 4 directions you couldn't ever get all the LL inbounds in a sequence without them circling the UK twice
The problem with EGLL is simply the shear weight of traffic, there are too many aircraft trying to land at the same time. The only solution as i see it is to reduce the amount of traffic by half but that is never going to happen.