Gatwick-3

[SWBKCB]

LVP - Low Viz Procedures

[vectisman]

Originally Posted by SWBKCB

LVP - Low Viz Procedures

Thank you.

[Apron Artist]

LGW has a very weird micro-climate. Being on the river Mole, you often - especially at this time of year - get a load of fog that is not there even 1 mile from the airport. Many a time I left at at 06:00 in thick fog, yet Horley, less than a mile away was clear. And it lingers, sometimes for hours.

easyJet had scheduled 222 departures out of a total 434 today. Naturally, ATC and LVP affects them far more than the next highest airline, BA Euroflyer on 47. I hope I'm wrong, but I expect many more cancellations.

[vectisman]

Originally Posted by Apron Artist

LGW has a very weird micro-climate. Being on the river Mole, you often - especially at this time of year - get a load of fog that is not there even 1 mile from the airport. Many a time I left at at 06:00 in thick fog, yet Horley, less than a mile away was clear. And it lingers, sometimes for hours.

easyJet had scheduled 222 departures out of a total 434 today. Naturally, ATC and LVP affects them far more than the next highest airline, BA Euroflyer on 47. I hope I'm wrong, but I expect many more cancellations.

Thanks for the informantion. I think that 47 includes the BA long haul flights too and the mainline Glasgow flight.

[Apron Artist]

Originally Posted by vectisman

Thanks for the informantion. I think that 47 includes the BA long haul flights too and the mainline Glasgow flight.

My apologies, yes. The data I get doesn't split the two entities. Tampa cancelled mainline. Not the first.

[YVRscot]

Norse cuts flights to SFO again

Norse has futher trimmed their seasonal flights to San Francisco. All flights after Oct 7th ( including mine!) have now been cancelled. No alternative or compensation offered.

[Sotonsean]

Originally Posted by YVRscot

Norse has futher trimmed their seasonal flights to San Francisco. All flights after Oct 7th ( including mine!) have now been cancelled. No alternative or compensation offered.

Norse Atlantic announced a couple of weeks ago that San Francisco was being axed from it's network. Although LGW-SFO was seasonal the route won't be returning for summer 2024.

You mentioned that all flights after October 07 2023 have been cancelled.

Norse Atlantic had originally stated that the last flight between LGW and SFO would be on the 28 October, at the end of the IATA northern summer 2023 season.

[Albert Hall]

Originally Posted by YVRscot

Norse has futher trimmed their seasonal flights to San Francisco. All flights after Oct 7th ( including mine!) have now been cancelled. No alternative or compensation offered.

Although they are only required to compensate you if the cancellation is within two weeks of departure, they are required to re-route you on another airline if you wish. Sounds like they think that only applies within two weeks too, which isn’t correct.

[Kiltrash]

Can I just say well done London Gatwick. We are here flying to Venice and both Easy Bag Drop and Security were a breeze. Both swift and polite all round...

[Dct_Mopas]

Originally Posted by Kiltrash

Can I just say well done London Gatwick. We are here flying to Venice and both Easy Bag Drop and Security were a breeze. Both swift and polite all round...

Can’t be quite so congratulatory of the Gatwick ATC management yet again today. Flow rate restriction of 16 arrivals per hour. Absolutely shambolic.

Not a dig at your post Kiltrash - glad you had a good experience. Sadly for arriving passengers in LGW today then very big delays knocking into departures as the afternoon progressed.

[Apron Artist]

Originally Posted by Dct_Mopas

Can’t be quite so congratulatory of the Gatwick ATC management yet again today. Flow rate restriction of 16 arrivals per hour. Absolutely shambolic.

Not a dig at your post Kiltrash - glad you had a good experience. Sadly for arriving passengers in LGW today then very big delays knocking into departures as the afternoon progressed.

Yup...again. 35 U2 departures cancelled so far...the clusterf.ery I predicted in March has been played out far too often this summer. Awful for the passengers.

[nguba]

A daily cap of 800 flight movements a day is in place until 1st October:

https://www.mediacentre.gatwickairpo...ddd-40f32.html

[Kiltrash]

While waiting for our flight to show gate no we noticed U28011 dep time 09.15 was shown as please wait....this got my curiosity and the aircraft arr into LGW on time at 08.10 according to FR24.... it eventually took off 12.24 so I thought ' tech issue ' ...perhaps just a flow rate issue ....Did feel sorry for the SLF..🙁

[Charley B]

Originally Posted by Kiltrash

While waiting for our flight to show gate no we noticed U28011 dep time 09.15 was shown as please wait....this got my curiosity and the aircraft arr into LGW on time at 08.10 according to FR24.... it eventually took off 12.24 so I thought ' tech issue ' ...perhaps just a flow rate issue ....Did feel sorry for the SLF..🙁

Our friends were on that flight,it was an issue with their flight plan which tower told Captain about as they had waited to go at the hold ..they had togo back to stand to refuel etc …they did indeed get away after 12.00 ..it wasn’t connected with the other issue ..the aircraft’s third sector of its day was canx .

[davidjohnson6]

Is the limit on flights at Gatwick due to genuine illness amongst ATC staff, or is there any sort of deliberate sick-out ?
If it's genuine, are there any underlying factors (e.g. disgruntled staff), lousy planning of training junior staff or maybe overwork and burn-out of staff over the peak summer or is it a case of a lot of different uncontrollable factors like Covid all coming at once ?
Is this likely to be just for a few days, or is there a non-trivial chance of an announcement this will continue into early October, or be in effect during half term as well ?

[Splat]

Good question, as someone on the receiving end I’d like to know the answer too.

[jmdavies86]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

Is the limit on flights at Gatwick due to genuine illness amongst ATC staff, or is there any sort of deliberate sick-out ?

Well, according to this article in the Belfast Telegraph, the cap will run until Sunday and has been imposed as 30% of NATS tower staff are unavailable for a variety of medical reasons, including COVID.

[Charley B]

Originally Posted by Splat

Good question, as someone on the receiving end I’d like to know the answer too.

Excellent article from Michele Robson who was a controller for NATS for over 20 years

Gatwick launches flight curb due to ATC staffing

You may have seen a few stories in the press recently about the delays at Gatwick as a result of a lack of ATC staff. To put it in context, ATC towers at airports are managed by separate ATC companies who bid for the contract. This is unlike the two UK ATC centres that are run by NATS as a monopoly and subject to price regulations by the CAA. At airports, the airport owner decides how much they are willing to pay for ATC and accepts a bid based on price and performance.

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NATS inherited the staff from the previous company, so they had no control over how many they would get. Controllers can choose to transfer to the new company or leave. Unfortunately, you can’t just transfer controllers from say Heathrow, as a) they still need extensive training to work at Gatwick and b) then it leaves Heathrow short. You also can’t train new controllers quickly as it takes around 18 months at a minimum, and only around 1% of those that apply make it through to be a live controller.

At airports, they are very susceptible to lack of staff due to sickness as they only have a small number of staff due to the number of positions in a tower plus contingency. No ATC provider can afford to have unlimited numbers of staff sitting around when they are competing on price. Once NATS have trained more controllers, then staff sickness will not cause such an issue. According to Gatwick airport, 30% of NATS tower staff are currently unavailable for a variety of medical reasons including covid.

So this leaves us in the situation today where Gatwick today implemented a temporary limit on daily flight movements to prevent delays and last-minute cancellations for passengers.

The decision was made alongside NATS, and means the airport will be limited to 800 flights a day. This means both departure and arrival flights. The restrictions start today and will remain in place until Sunday, 1 October.

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“We are working closely with NATS to build resilience in the control tower, and this decision means we can prevent as much disruptions as possible.

“London Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers who have been impacted by these restrictions.”
Before the limit was put in place the movements expected for this week were as follows:

Tuesday- 800 movements
Weds – 829 movements
Thursday – 840 movements
Friday –865 movements
Saturday – 800 movements
Sunday – 830 movements

As it has only just been announced, I have not heard of specific cancellations, but if you have a booking this week from Gatwick I would be keeping a close eye on it.

[Splat]

I do wonder if all this goes back to that t@at MOL pushing fares down. Eventually everyone’s costs are squeezed so low either other ancillaries such as drop off charges are needed, or there is a reduction in service levels which is where we are at.

[lfc84]

Originally Posted by Splat

I do wonder if all this goes back to that t@at MOL pushing fares down. Eventually everyone’s costs are squeezed so low either other ancillaries such as drop off charges are needed, or there is a reduction in service levels which is where we are at.

Their ops at LGW is tiny