Just been reading bits of that Mott MacDonald report from 2012 where they concisely state that the non-compliance issues are sufficient to state that Northolt could not be licensed in its current form and that the runway is unsuitable for any commercial operations, even if it remained under Government control.
I actually think it’s a disgrace that the MOD consciously deemed it necessary to hide this report from any other third parties, including the CAA. ‘Best keep this one quiet for now and just stick with the status quo and not rock the boat’ is no doubt the course they took.
So, what happens now? The lack of adequate runway end safety areas and the considerable number of significant obstacles infringing the obstacle limitation surfaces must mean the CAA will have to revise their AIP entry with new declared lengths, even though the MOD will probably stick to their current figures. Not sure if you could have two sets of declared lengths though, one for the military and another for the civilian users? Very much doubt that is possible, or safe.
If the landing distance on RWY 25 went down to the recommended 1,354m from the current 1,684m, that’s pretty significant. Notice that the report also saw that the runway friction levels were below the maintenance planning level, so not only is the ‘real’ available landing distance dramatically shorter, the runway surface friction characteristics when wet are also poor. If you undershoot on RWY25 or come off the other end, those Lytag beds are far from ideal – evidence is that they don’t always retard aircraft at all speeds, aircraft can skip across them, they soak up fuel and pose an increased risk of fire. The fire tenders can’t access them either.
When you’ve got to land in the same direction as Heathrow’s runways you’re going to have tailwind conditions on a regular basis and with the shortened runway that’s just not acceptable. Add to that the need for PAR approaches on RWY07 and the turn onto final approach at 4 miles and it’s all too tight.
With over 300 obstacles infringing the OLS, according to the Mott MacDonald report, some very significant and immovable, none apparently lit, why does the AIP entry only identify a handful of those?
It all stinks. Add to this RFFS inadequacies, military ATC procedures, low PCN bearing strengths of runway and taxiways, inadequate runway markings and lighting and proximity to Heathrow and overall misleading AIP data, how on earth have they got away with the status quo with over 90% civil aviation usage?