welliewanger
I suggest you check the post I replied to a Dutch pilot before , nearly all the foreign pilots have this question.
daveyjones744
I do not know which airline do you work for,but I think your aircraft parking bay is in T3 and you inbound KM or BOBAK,let's say you inbound KM.
You said we should have one plan for normal flow and another one for back up when overflow.Currently we have two mainly used STAR for KM ,that is KM01A and KM03A ,but I think you can see KM03A has such a big potential conflict with departure aircrafts so we prefer to use KM01A ,even if you use KM03A ,you will fly to east arrival ,of course you will use the runway you prefered to use to land ,but think about east arrival will be quite busy ,we have tried this way before.So normally we change the runway and made final decision in final area ,that need a lot of coordination with relavent sectors also ,they will check ground monitor radar see if there are a lot of traffic waiting for departure on 36R ,if there is ,we need to think about 01 for you ,it is not very easy,that is the main point you should understand.
Sometimes I have to say we are really nearly annoying by pilots who request runway especially we are very very busy ,we keep talking all the time and then pilot said:BeiJing ,XXX.After we said go ahead ,pilot replied we request runway 01 even if we have told them final sector will tell them for several times !!! I think if you fly here a lot of times ,then you will know how we work usually.