nivsy

To offer an answer to the initial post - that xxxxx of a BAA Chief Exec should be the one to walk - what drivel.....
Has he ever heard of Business Continuity plans?
Lesson learnt I hope - that an airport is exactly that - and not a shopping centre....

The mis-information or lack of information has been unprecedented and that is just as bad as the weather situation.


Nivsy

fivegreenlight

Can someone explain why LHR only has one runway ops even now ??
It hasn't snowed since Saturday

stuckgear

And on sunday mid day Farnborough was operational. (G-V went out as i drove past)

WHBM

Imbecile Hammond has just made another hesitant performance, this time in Parliament and thus on television, to announce his grand plan.

The best that the so-highly-paid whizz-kids at the Department for Transport can come up with - they will, most condescendingly, "relax the night flight restrictions at Heathrow for the next three days".

Talk about monkeys running the zoo.

sky9

The first question that needs to be asked is: Snow was forecast on the 18th December. What measures were put in place on the night of the 17th to anti ice the stands?

Skipness One Echo

Let's be honest. This lot don't HAVE a transport policy. even the easing of the restrictions mean no departures from 0100 to start of play the following day. It's hardly the Dunkirk mentality, expecially with all those marginals in West London.

Hammond came across quite poorly, he's playing politics pretending this is an incredibly rare event. It isn't. I remember them from when I was a kid. My lifetime is a puddle of gnat's **** in climate terms so whatever loony decided winters would be mild for ever probably got promoted to Head of Retail at BAA.

BAA that strategic asset we flogged off to Ferrovial. Kraft anyone?

Having been past LHR on Sunday, there was ONE active and visible snowplough for the whole of Terminal One.

biddedout

Well I know FRA has had its problems recently, but last week I taxied past thirty seriously large snow clearing vheicles lined up in two columns ready to roll. I cannot imagine airport UK has anything like that.

El Grifo

Same ****, same country

Who took the "Great" out of Britain ?

Someone did !

LessThanSte

Why could they not just ask all those pilots sat around with nothing to do to start their engines for a few minutes, that'd surely clear loads of the snow?

Or send for as many shovels as you can find then ask those sat in the terminal if anyone minds helping out, im sure there will be plenty of volunteers.

It does seem that Heathrow have decided that the easiest way to get rid off all this pesky snow is to wait for it to melt and save the expense of using their equipment!

LessThanSte

Oh and also it appears that those in Westminster havnt grasped the idea of what a 1 in 20 year event actually means. Its not that there will be 1 event like it in 20 years, just that an event of this magnitude has a likelihood of happening in 20 years, but there is nothing to say that it couldnt happen every year. They seem to think it all means that 'oh, it snowed like buggery last year so it'll be fine for the next 10 years or so!'.

Share winter weather equipment (grit trucks, ploughs etc) with countrys in the southern hemisphere i say, cost is split 50:50 and every March/October we hire a big boat, stick all the equipment on it and ferry them to the country thats about to have a winter. Less storage costs, less purchase costs, economies of scale, all that. Maybe il send that into the Big Idea website!

gordonroxburgh

But the media get in anyway and tell the story how it is, not how some 20 something PR person will no dress sense and silly hair wants it to be told. (Did you notice rather than being at the airport, he was dispatched to the TV studios!)

Same happened when T5 opened, first few days were open house, then when it went ***-up the media were banished to the local cheep and nasty car park.

Remember folks LGW is not BAA owned and to give them credit they have had their runway basically open for the last 2 days. they have announced that they are committed to spending 8M to double their snow fleet.

Finally BAA sold Gatwick for £1.5Billion, shame some of the money was not invested in the operating infrastructure at their other airports.

utis

What about the might of power and efficiencies of laser? Laser technology has been mastered from medicine to thick metal cutting, from precision astrophysics to hi-tech weapons, thermonuclear reactors..

A frequency could be set only for snow molecules on couple lasers on mid-high masts next to runways to continuously scan runway surface and automatically adjusting power levels depending on snow intensity. This would do no damage to any other surfaces or materials as frequency would be specific and target only ice type molecules.

I.e. - google for patent "A system to remove ice formed on a surface, such as an airplane wing. Heat generative laser beam is directed upon a snow or ice-covered surface, thereby vaporizing the ice and snow formed thereupon. By translating the laser light generator along the frozen surface, vaporization of the snow and ice formed on the entire surface takes place."

I assume the same principle could be used for clearing fog around airport lets say 10miles radius..

A more powerful laser I assume could be used for disrupting hurricane cores?

If only worldwide industry would work as hard in putting more comfort and performance in industry as in naughty full-body scanner..

Married a Canadian

In my time here so far it has never closed due to the snow. Yes it gets more of it...but at least it seems to have a plan each winter...we get a winter ops briefing in the terminal long before the first signs of the white stuff.

Dairyground

The basic device is already widely deployed at a much smaller scale - the microwave oven that these days is present in almost every domestic and commercial kitchen. The major problem is that all living things are mostly water, so any stay energy, and there would be a lot arouind, from the runway cooker would rapidly cook anyone who got too close.

A better, and possibly equally infeasible, solution would be to put a roof over the stands. That would keep the snow off the wings and permit the ground handling staff and equipment to work unhindered.

In the current crisis, with incoming flights diverted to places such as Birmingham, Newcastle and Mancester that have good rail links, it should be feasible to take passengers, crew and even cleaners to the aircraft by train, rather than waiting for the snow to melt. Apart from third-rail electrics, the railway is much less susceptible to snow than airports of roads. Diesels are more weather resistant than overhead electrics, and steam locomotives could get through drifts several feet high. We don't have enough of them to make a difference anymore, but we do appear to have a number of Eurostar electrics standing idle at present. Why not use them to take the passengers to the planes?

J.O.

Re the YYZ experience, the airport authority's take is that a complete shutdown due to snow and icing, such as LHR has done, is not a viable option. They have worked very hard and invested large sums to prevent it from happening. Yes things slow down significantly when the going gets tough, but many flights still get through.

I've had the pleasure of seeing their snow clearing team in action up close and it's pretty impressive. They run a conga line of equipment and clear the centre 150 ft of a runway with one pass each way along the runway. The whole thing takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

londonman

Channel 4 had the CEO of BAA on last night. He had clearly been given some media training and came out with the same vacuous phrase four times.

John Snow pointed out that Ferrovial were rumoured to be short of money so how could they invest in better snowclearing. Listening to the reply, you could smell the BS from here.

Credit to LGW...they have got their act together.

frangatang

Ferrovial might be shyte but l think you will find BAA when state owned was shyte in winter as well!

FlightCosting

The longer that the terminals are full of passengers going nowhere, the more the retail outlets are making money. All BAA has to do is to let a few more into the terminal when those who have been there a few days have spent all their cash. A happy Christmas for somebody

About 40 years ago we fast taxied a viscount down 27L to clear the fog so that a 1-11 could position to CWL. Maybe BAA should get a few of the pensioned off Harriers to do a hover over the runways, that should do the trick.

Right Engine

BBC News - How Helsinki airport deals with snow and ice

londonman

Some have said that the comparison between Helsinki and LHR is invalid. I don't quite see why. Helsinki has fewer passengers and presumably less revenue and yet it copes far better than LHR. Why? Investment.

OK - it might have a third runway and I can see how that makes things easier but surely LHR could adopt a one runway operation (albeit at a seriously curtailed level of service) by clearing the other one?

LGW was castigated (quite understandably) the other day when they were closed down but my understanding is that they got their finger out and got some more snow clearing equipment.