Originally Posted by
EI-A330-300
1 - IAA save airlines more fuel than anywhere in the world
2 - an average of 4 arrivals in summer impacted in a 20 minute window and less in winter as it's earlier
3 - They can extend the 7 arrivals in 10 minutes longer (6 excluding certain periods)
4 - Not sure how it will hurt traffic stats
5 - DUB is slot controlled so easy sorted, lots of fuel was burned yesterday with 30 minutes from push back to take off with 16 in use.
Believe it will always land on 10 and straight into 300 gates via E2, L2, F2, L3 even if the flow of traffic is into 28 with very few departures will be grand. If it was the other way it would cause major delays but this way it's off the runway quickly.
Other news - Austrian Airlines returned to DUB this year today and will operate a 9 weekly charter service to VIE (via JER outbound).
I like to think I make my fair share of contributions to those fuel savings seeing as I do work for the IAA.
Dublin is slot controlled, but so is every high level sector in Europe, so say a flight from Warsaw to Dublin needs to be cleared by the Central Flow Management Unit through probably about twenty different sectors, so it needs all those slots too, therefore delaying other flights is easier said than done.
You can't just flip a runway 180 degrees unless the winds are very calm, and if you do it takes a lot of time, so unless the skies are totally clear you need to open the hold.
Let's say the winds do allow 28 to flip to 10 for the A380, which will be very rarely possible in winter (remember that runway is very short and very narrow for an A380 so very little margin for a tailwind), it means any arrivals need to hold until they can either follow it down 10 or wait for 28 to become available. No departures can push back until the A380 is at it's gate, because if they taxi for 28 they'll lose their cockpit at the 16/34 hold point for 28, and if they taxi for 10 they'll lose the left wing.
It'll hurt traffic stats because in the 10-15 mins the airport has to close you could move 10 odd a320s etc.
Remember flights get delayed or arrive early all the time. If the A380 is allowed into Dublin it will cause mayhem.