I have to agree with BEagle, as someone who flies out of LHR I think the 3rd runway is a BAD idea, the airport at the moment is appallingly organised and run. Officially LHR is 98% capacity, I think that this figure is underestimated and LHR is actually over capacity. Whenever we have quiet periods e.g. post x-mas and the movements are reduced by 3-5% the airport just works beautifully. The 3rd runway should only be built if BAA/NAT's are forced to 'cap' the number of movements, otherwise the greed will take over and the result will be 3 runways at near 100% capacity with the resulting congestion meaning more airbourne holding delays etc. One way of improving LHR overnight would be to remove the restriction on the use of slot pairs, at the moment if the slot is not used more than 80% of the planned time then the airline defaults on the slot and it is returned to BAA/NAT's, the result of this is that we often fly near empty aircraft to destinations all over the world just to retain the slot???!!!! Lifting this alleviation would allow airlines to cut back where necessary.