Approaches into Liverpool?

[Landing_24R]

Coming back from Paris on the easyjet late on Tuesday night, we flew quite an interesting approach into Liverpool. Heading west north west towards the airfield, we turned right onto a high left base for runway 27, so that the runway was visible on the left- we then flew past the airfield on our left, turned right onto an easterly heading (descending all the while) and looped back in to the right to head west onto short finals then to land.

I was just wondering if this was standard practice for arrivals into Liverpool from the south-east, and if so then why? Something to do with Manchester? Or perhaps we just flew past then looped round to loose a bit of height? Must have been fairly noisy for the locals:p

Thanks for any responses,

Landing_24R

[garethjk22]

Liverpool runway is duie east west (09/27). 09 approached follow a normal logical approach. 27 approaches are different due to the proximity to MAN. If you extend the centre line of LPL's runway it just about cuts accross the middle of MAN's. So, if LPL uses 27 traffic conflicts with either 06 arrivals into MAN or 24 deps. So, to solve the problem, approached to 27 for Liverpool from the south fly north over the field then fly a right hand down wind (field on the right of the aircraft) hence turning onto final from the north and avoiding the activity at MAN which would be to the south.

Hope that makes sense.

[Hooligan Bill]

Landing_24R,

The standard routing inbound to runway 27 at Liverpool from the south east is towards the KEGUN hold (located near Mold) to pick up radar vectors to take the aircraft west and then north of the airfield for a right hand pattern. Crews can normally expect FL60 to FL80 at KEGUN and therefore plan their descent accordingly. However, from time to time there are gaps in the Manchester traffic which allow a direct left base join through Whitegate to be coordinated. Due to the dynamic nature of the traffic situation the coordination quite often takes place fairly late, leaving the inbound high (they were planning to go via KEGUN). If the aircraft is too high to go straight to final from left base, it will be taken through the centreline and positioned from the north as you have described, keeping it inside Liverpool's delagated airspace.

[Landing_24R]

Thanks for the replies, makes much more sense now!

Landing_24R