Decisions are made by people who are far closer to the coalface than the contributors to this thread.
Likewise the ops teams at almost every other major UK airport who opt to accept what diversions they can on a reasoned case-by-case basis. BTW, many contributors here are quite familiar with the coalface.
They are in constant dialogue with the myriad of agencies and partners that make up the operation of the airport and hence are acting with all of the facts in front of them.
So this is not the case at every other major airport in the UK?
Perhaps time to respect those decisions and the people that make them.
MAN is indeed fortunate to have the
only airport ops team in the country with such inspired decision-making skills in a mass-diversion scenario!
You may have noticed that many of flybe's early arrivals of non-based a/c were cancelled, so presumably T3 was able to cope.
Good point. Consider a situation when MAN's own FlyBe inbounds from Scottish airports were all cancelled due to snow up there. Meanwhile, the SOU-EDI and SOU-GLA flights, already en-route, request MAN. The 'NO DIVS' NOTAM takes care of that ... refused. Two Eastern JS41's refused by default as well. The T3 gates remain unoccupied and the handling staff twiddle their thumbs. FlyBe unhappy, MAN loses money twice by rejecting the chance to offset the effect of their own flights already cancelled. Yes, maybe MAN can't accept a B747/A380 div on that day ... hence the appeal for a common-sense
case-by-case policy (not a free-for-all).
So in a way, taking it your response on above questions would be MAN is nearly full with that lot alone, I can understand the blanket "go elsewhere" in a way.
The 'NO DIVS' NOTAM bans everything! In your scenario, why not specify no air transport diversions (if that is really necessary - see the FlyBe scenario). Why by default exclude Citations, Learjets and the like which can park with Landmark?
All we are advocating is a common-sense case-by-case solution. The "our ops team knows best" argument only stands up if their counterparts at all other major UK airports are inept. And by the way, the convenience of Manchester Airport's ops managers is not the only consideration here ... spare a thought for the airlines whose airborne flights need a dynamic resolution, and to ATC who need cooperation in finding safe-harbour for the backlog of flights holding in the air. And from the point of view of the ATC system, the ability to offload three Citations or three ATR's is just as valuable as offloading three A380's from the worst-affected sectors.
Maybe we should all just accept the wisdom of those who argue that because MAN can't accommodate A380-divs, we should allow the ATC-system to become overloaded with holding executive jets and commuter types. Ever spared a thought for
that coalface, dear handling agency experts?