Heathrow Director, apologies if the overwhelming sense of irony of my post didn't come through...
30W most of what I would have said to you has already been covered here, you are not obliged to know the schedules of our aircraft in much the same way you are not obliged to accept an RNAV approach behind us and can take the 15 mile separation for a standard ILS. As was said here I very much doubt the ATIS was changed for the 380 arrival, it is normally communicated to aircraft behind us by ATC and asked if they are happy for an RNAV approach.
In fairness though, this seems to be a Gatwick issue as operating into Manchester for several years has never raised this as a problem and 90% of the time when we go in they are only using one runway.
My airmanship point is that my current company SOP's encourage us to prepare for a change of approach at the last minute and brief it, whether it is an ILS downgrade or reversion to AOTILS (an RNAV in this case).
If you are in a bus you have a sec 1/2/3 f-pln that could be used for this event thereby reducing workload and stress at low level as you are heading towards terra-crawley.
You obviously haven't been to DXB much, 43 mins is considered on time although as you will appreciate all it takes is one pax not showing up and their bag in the wrong place to induce a fairly significant delay.
Del Prado
Again this is a matter of communication between ATC and us. The biggest issue with the 380 is getting 550 bums on seats and ready. If we tell the crew we need to be ready quickly 9 times out of 10 we can go from "fully" ready to being at the holding point in less than 10 mins. Our only minimum requirement is 3 mins for engine stabililsation. We can also expedite departures in small gaps or take an intersection and often communicate this to ATC to mitigate the wake turb requirements between 2 arrivals.
Hope this helps and when I come in later this month, I will make sure we are on time
