LUTON

[vintage ATCO]

I reckon we'll hit 400 in a day this year.

[jetsetwilly]

Looks like Outsize Baggage is closing tonight for good.

[Alloy]

Outsize bagagae closing for good? What happens to skis etc.?

[Powerjet1]

Originally Posted by jetsetwilly

Looks like Outsize Baggage is closing tonight for good.

Is that the area when the few extra check-in desks are to be added?

[LTNman]

Originally Posted by Alloy

Outsize bagagae closing for good? What happens to skis etc.?

A new belt was installed next to the staircase which takes passengers up to passport contol. This new area is also a staff enterance to airside and has been open for several months.

Is that the area when the few extra check-in desks are to be added?

Yes but I can't see more than 3 new check-in desks occupying the space but then 3 new desks still means an increase of 5% in check-in capacity.

[CAP493]

Originally Posted by Buster the Bear

I wonder what the daily movement rate will be come summer 06, and for that matter, peak hourly rate?

LLAO is planning at 40/60 for some 'peak' hours but only for those hours where the traffic mix is roughly 70% arrivals. Otherwise, it remains at +/- 32/60. However, the 'wild card' remains corporate flights as these are still (for 2006) uncoordinated and so largely, unpredictable.

As for Brookmans Park,

[King Pong]

Originally Posted by jetsetwilly

Looks like Outsize Baggage is closing tonight for good.

It's still open at lunchtime

[pabely]

Instanbul

Originally Posted by Powerjet1

Maybe easy might do what they did with Athens when they had two daily flights from LTN; fly overnight. I think the second departure was around 21.45and allowing for the time diff flying east, became a very early morning arrival in Athens. Maybe the same for Instanbul. Return arrival into LTN would then be about 10/10.30 thereabouts.

Timings on EZJ Website are 6:15 Dep LTN return 14:35. Prices already up to £75 each way on some dates tried.....Seats filling fast?

[LTNman]

I see that easyjet are about to maximize the number of parking spaces outside their new HQ and hangar. Already the overflow taxi rank has a metal pole fence running through it and pavements are about to disappear. Looks like a bit of forward planning for when the airports main staff car park becomes a new apron

[ebenezer]

London/LTN to Istanbul from 29 June and already prices already up to £75 each way on some dates...?? Looks like easyJet's hit the jackpot again!! Although the Rijeka is initially only four times per week, what's the betting that within a couple of months of the 30 June start date, is goes to a daily service? Apparently, the airline's new CEO is actually very pro-LTN and has been quoted as saying he feels that there are still some untapped market opportunities to be realised from there. LTN's gonna need that additional 'south-east' apron sooner than they thought.

[Buster the Bear]

I think that you will find that a Banana desert becomes another easyJet destination (from Luton?).

400 movements per day! Kind of reminds me of the days 06/24 and 18/36 were in constant use! At least the airport authority does not have to mark out 'mole hills' on an 'active' runway any more!

As Stansted is mostly 'free flow', can I ask if this is the same at Luton with regard to release of departures into TMA airspace and if not, what are the airport operators doing to ensure parity with an airport in Essex? I must admit to being a little out of touch with such things of late?

In a free market economy, all airports should be 'free flow' or all should be subject to a TMA release? To put it another way, what justification can be given for not applying equity to all London airports and their customer airlines, to access into the TMA?

Can you imagine BT, allowing other phone operators access to its network once its own customer base had been connected first and prioritising all access to its infrastructure on a BT customer first, other non BT customers second! I think the regulator would have its say?

Give me one good reason as to why the vast majority of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted departures can access the TMA on a 'free flow' basis and the likes of Luton, London City, Farnborough, & Southend etc get TMA delays? All the airlines and operators pay the same en-route charges, so why do airlines flying from Heathrow have an advantage? Okay they take a delay in forming a queue for departure, but their take off is seldom delayed by the TMA, unlike Luton airport customers. Luton departures seem to get delayed access into the TMA due to London City or Northolt departures, but never as a result of Heathrow deps?

Why? The TMA is biased toward Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted and that does not make for a 'free market economy'!

Oh I forgot, Heathrow is the busiest UK airport! So what! A free market is not happening at Luton and other airports, but what is being done to stamp 'EQUITY' on access to the London TMA?

Rant over, now back to playing monopoly!

[vintage ATCO]

Been at the Bear juice Buster?

Rumour control has it we did a 35/hr last week, all heavy metal.

[King Pong]

By comparison what is the maximum flow rate an airport can achieve with a single runway and no heavy aircraft (Boeing 747 etc). I would have thought that LTN’s 35 movements an hour is getting close to capacity even it if it had a full length taxiway and high speed turn offs.

[CAP493]

Originally Posted by King Pong

By comparison what is the maximum flow rate an airport can achieve with a single runway and no heavy aircraft (Boeing 747 etc). I would have thought that LTN’s 35 movements an hour is getting close to capacity even it if it had a full length taxiway and high speed turn offs.

It all depends on the traffic mix i.e. vortex wake separation requirements. Although LTN handles few 'heavy' aircraft (and then, mainly Boeing 767s and Airbus A300s) it has a higher proportion of 'light' vortex wake aircraft - because of the sheer number of corporate flights using the Airport, many of which are 'light' (e.g. HS125, Citation, LearJet) and the vortex wake departure separation requirements are exactly the same as for 'mediums' (e.g. Boeing 737/757/Airbus A319/A320/A321) following 'heavies' at somewhere such as Gatwick. Luton's Runway 26 has the same vortex wake departure separation dispensation for the Alpha intersection, as does Gatwick from some of its taxiway/runway intersections, and this as at Gatwick, saves one minute. However, the arrival spacing on Runway 26 even when there's no vortex wake arrival separation required, always has to take account of the lack of an ideally-positioned runway turn-off (Runway 08 is less problematic) and so cannot be the minimum permitted even when there are only landing aircraft. Full-length parallel taxiways will resolve this issue.

...can I ask if this is the same at Luton with regard to release of departures into TMA airspace and if not, what are the airport operators doing to ensure parity with an airport in Essex?

Buster's right to ask this question because even with better positioned taxiways and other improvements to the real estate, the airspace remains a major impediment. However, in fairness to those who are working behind the scenes, 'freeflow' is now in operation on all westerly Compton and Olney SIDs out of Luton, and it'll almost certainly become available on easterly Olney SIDs in the medium-term. Unfortunately, the Brookmans Park situation can be summed up in two words "A nightmare" that won't be resolved until 2008 when drastically revised SIDs for Luton and London/City come into use (always assuming that the neddies in the CAA's Direction of Airspace Policy agree, and the NIMBYs and NOPEs in Hertfordshire don't lodge an objection with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Grand Mufti and the Pope). There's little doubt that some key airspace development people's eyes were taken off the ball, no doubt because of an historic pre-occupation with BAA's requirements at Heathrow and Stansted, with the result that the airspace and procedures are desperately playing 'catch-up' with the growth at Luton, and London/City (not forgetting Northolt and from 2007, Southend). Just how - for the next 24 months - local LTMA airspace, the local roads and LTN's increasingly inadequate infrastructure are going to cope with 400 movements a day, 40 movements an hour at peak times, and over 10m annual pax at Luton, will be an interesting scenario to watch...

[Bumz_Rush]

Luton SIDs towards CLN

Silly question, why not launch off 08, after LUT, on a parallel track to the normal LHR CLN SID.
I have had two of these routings recently, and they do work....

Only a thought....

Bumz

[ebenezer]

Originally Posted by Bumz_Rush

Silly question, why not launch off 08, after LUT, on a parallel track to the normal LHR CLN SID.
I have had two of these routings recently, and they do work....
Only a thought....
Bumz

Unfortunately, it depends on your rate of climb, the runway in use at Stansted and the tactical trafic situation at the time. However, the principle is a sound one and you might just find that from 2008, Luton's Clacton SIDs - depending on Stansted's runway in use - do something along these lines...

Give me one good reason as to why the vast majority of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted departures can access the TMA on a 'free flow' basis and the likes of Luton, London City, Farnborough, & Southend etc get TMA delays?

Probably down to crass forward planning by those who should have been better educated. I'm reliably informed that somehwere in the bowels of the CAA (or NATS?) there's a 12 year-old 'planning' document for the London area airports that anticipated by 2005, Stansted's second runway would be fully operational, Luton would be nothing more than a northern home counties version of Lasham with all its traffic having transferred to an expanded Stansted, and that City would still just be supporting Dash-7 schedules three times a day to Paris and Brussels. How wrong can the planners be? If they've got any sense they'll keep the document under lock and key (better still, shred it...) No doubt the idiots who formulated policy on the basis of this cr**p have mostly retired to become highly-paid 'consultants' leaving coal-face TMA controllers to have to deal with the effects of their stupidity.

[CAP493]

Originally Posted by vintage ATCO

I reckon we'll hit 400 in a day this year.

If this is achieved on a day or days when the runway is closed between midnight and 0545 local, it will require 18 hours sustained at 22 movements for each hour. However, since traffic still remains cyclical over each 24-hour period, and there are perhaps four or five hours over each day when the traffic drops to a mere 15 or 16, it's likely that LTN will - to achieve 400 movements a day when the runway's closed at night - be operating for around 60% of its approx. 18-hour opening time i.e. 11 to 12 hours per 'day' at a sustained movement rate of +/- 30/60. Somehow, I doubt that the local airspace with its present inadequate structure (despite the long-awaited Luton airspace improvement due on-line in May this year) will be able to support this sort of sustained aerial activity at LTN, given the increasing airspace demands from other TMA airports and airfields e.g. London/City and Northolt.

[vintage ATCO]

I agree. I was thinking when we are H24.

[OLNEY 1 BRAVO]

Quote:

CAP493 wrote: (despite the long-awaited Luton airspace improvement due on-line in May this year)

Is this the long awaited introduction of the western airspace extension and LHD's onto "08"/ Is the STAR still to be called the Henlo 1A arrival?

[Powerjet1]

Understand the final Masterplan for expansion at LTN will now not be published until May. Originally, it had been expected in late March/early April.