Originally Posted by
FlightPathOBN
Currently, when one brings in a group of heavies, it kills the ground ops.
Heathrow gets about 625 arrivals per day. If we say it is two-thirds A320 size and one-third widebodies, that is about 210 widebody arrivals per day. This is not surprising when BA alone have 130 widebodies in the fleet, the majority of which arrive at Heathrow each day. This hasn't varied by much for many years.
So the arrival of a group of aircraft together is absolutely standard and to be expected. Excuses by the likes of the UK Border Agency or absent gate personnel that "several aircraft arrived together and we can't handle that easily" are a nonsense. All aspects of the airport should have got used to this long ago.