"No-fly zones" in the EGLL RMA ?
BAA announced last week that NATS had begun, a couple of weeks previously, trialling a scheme of "no-fly zones" in the RMA. These apparently cover parts of north and south London, and follow a weekly rotation, the intention being to distribute EGLL landing traffic on westerlies over different boroughs on different dates.
It was made clear that this wasn't a reference to runway alternation, but to the routes that aircraft take under radar vectoring between the end of the STAR and becoming established on the 27L/27R ILS.
I'm having difficulty getting my head around this concept and, frankly, I'd have thought that controllers had more than enough to do already without worrying that they had sent an aircraft over, say, Haringey instead of Hackney or vice versa.
Can anyone in the know explain how this scheme works, please ?