PFR
No apology required! Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Whether or not the practicalities of the situation can accomodate those opinions is what is at question here and in this case they cannot.
MA have gone to great lengths to make the introduction of R2 have as little impact on communities as possible. The Cheshire 106 agreement requires southbound jets above a certain size to fly a Honiley departure from the 24s. Well before the runway opened ATC were all too well aware of the implications this would have on the departure rate, MA were made aware of it, but they stuck to the agreement. So you can see they do try and foster good community relations at the expense of some delays, but the scenarios you have outlined go beyond what would be acceptable in business terms.
In an ideal world, parallel runways would not be staggered like at MAN and the terminals would be in between them. Sound familiar? In order to provide a segregated service (two runways operating independently of each other) as we do now, the runways would need to be 760m apart in order to comply with ICAO criteria. The choice is now yours. Do you build runways 390m apart and stagger them by 1850m as we have now, or do you try and build them 760m apart? Just think of the land that would have taken and the environmental impact. If MA had applied to build them 760m apart they would have got nowhere.
As it is they have an airport which is not constrained by runway capacity and with planned future terminal expansion will see them well into the future and the forecast traffic growth.
As sky9 mentioned, landing 24L and departing 24R would have its limitations. The runways would not be segregated so arrival spacing would have to be increased to permit departures. There would need to be very large gaps after every 3 or 4 arrivals to back-track those that have arrived (assuming no southside parallel taxiway was built). I would imagine that the overall movement rate would be well below what was achievable with only one runway. Not much of a return on your investment is it?
In the end what do passengers want? They want to be able to fly to where they want, when they want from where they want. Many of those people who complain about noise from Manchester Airport, are the very same people who would complain if their flights were delayed because of airport capacity constraints. You can't have your cake and eat it.
[ 22 July 2001: Message edited by: cossack ]