Folks
Yep the Bilbao flight should have been going south, but there are though departures to the North-east (Buzard, & Brookmans Park). These track 053 degrees at LON 2d. This track takes them across the centre-line of RW 09L. To cope with this the go-around from RW09L is as follows: Climb to 3000'. Straight ahead until passing 1580' or I-AA 0d (i.e RW09L threshold) whichever is later then left onto Track 040 degrees. This puts both aircraft on diverging tracks.
The lessons have been learnt. The go around tracks used to be straight ahead, but this changed following a near miss a few years back.
And if that doesn't work you also have TCAS to stop metal scrapping on metal.
Heathrow going to single runway causes utter chaos. It has happened before. In the last few years both BA & VS have had aircraft stranded on the runway for long periods of time. What happens is that the aircraft on the ground at LHR get huge start up delays. The guys in the air hold if they have the endurance or divert. Some longhaul services have ended up in Cardiff and Newcastle. Aircraft on the ground elsewhere are held using slots that control the flow of traffic into LHR to match the availble capacity. Chaotic and frustrating, but safe!
It was a very clever program, raising a good number of issues, but failed in that the plot had a similar number of holes.
The sight of a BA tailfin lying in that field left me cold.
T'bug