Mikehotel152 wrote:-
Would a second runway make much difference? The limiting factor is usually the airport's overall fire cover being reduced below minimum levels whilst dealing with an emergency.
If a plane crash lands and substantially breaks up with a fire on one runway at a two or more runway airport then of course the whole airport is normally closed whilst the emergency is dealt with by fire crews, ambulance and Police.
But once any fire has been extinguished and all injured or deceased passengers removed and the fire crews put back on standby (plus any broken or used fire fighting and other related emergency equipment replaced) then there will be huge commercial and also passenger pressure to reopen the other runway and continue operating as many flights as possible as soon as possible. The BA038 777 from Beijing at LHR on 17th Jan 2008 happily didn't involve any fatalities but the aircraft did partially break up and remained on the Southern runway for several days while the AAIB documented everything and plans on how to remove the aircraft were made. If that had happened at Gatwick the whole airport would have undoubtedly been shut for at least 2 or 3 days. Instead of which the Northern runway at Heathrow was back in normal use the same day within just an hour or so (see post #27 at
[17 Jan 2008] BA38 lands short of the runway - Page 2 - FlyerTalk Forums)
As Gatwick wouldn't initially be anywhere near as busy as Heathrow for at least another 15 or 20 years after a second runway opened it probably ought to manage to resume close to full operations quite well with only one runway if an aircraft crashed on the other and there was a several day delay before all crash investigation and wreckage removal was complete. But it depends which 2nd runway option they choose since if they went for the close parallel ones where the two runways can't operate at the same time its possible a crash landed plane on one runway could mean the other being closed too until the other one was fully cleared. So hopefully they will avoid choosing such a short sighted runway option for that very reason (as well as the passenger capacity related reasons on top of that).
EDIT:- Just couldn't help resist mentioning that in watching quite a bit of the coverage on Sky News and BBC News yesterday I also saw no sign at all of Chris Yates but there were interviews with several highly experienced British former commercial pilots. Does this mean that he has finally been de-listed as an "aviation expert" by the British media?
A quick News Google for "Chris Yates" suggests he is in fact still operating and making comments about the Air Asia crash but only the German media now seems to believe that he is an "Aviation Expert". See yesterday's coverage at
www.dw.de/analyst-indonesia-has-a-poor-air-safety-record/a-18155440
His Linked In entry at
https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/chris-yates/22/b09/12b suggests that even Jane's have finally given him the push as their "Aviation Security Editor" (they would do far better to employ my former school class mate Philip Baum if they want a real one) but he is still running his own rather amateur website (which claims rather forlornly that something better is "coming soon") with speculation on a variety of crashes at
www.yatesconsulting.co.uk/ and encouraging the media to contact him for more so called "insight and analysis"