LHR alternation in strong winds

[Hand Solo]

Can any LHR people explain the logic behind allocating the landing runway over the last few days? I was flying Friday prior to 1500 with 27R as landing runway and anticipated returning to LHR that evening to land on 27L. When we got back we were surprised to find that we were still landing on 27R despite warnings on the ATIS of turbulence and windshear in the last few miles, mainly caused by the winds blowing at about 240/40-50 over the hangars. After a couple of go-arounds and a report of mod to sev turbulence on short finals the landing runway was swiftly swapped to 27L. This leaves me with two questions:

1. Why were the runways not swapped at 1500Z as normal.
2. Why do the powers that be persist in trying to land aircraft on 27R when the winds are patently unsuitable?

[Warped Factor]

1) Don't know, wasn't there last Friday.

2) Yesterday morning we landed on 27L against the alternation all morning due to the wind.

There are set criteria for when the warning message about turbulence goes out on the ATIS when landing on 27R, but there's no subsequent set of numbers for dictating when we might de-alternate and land 27L instead. It is probably fair to say that that is done in response to comments from those that have just flown the 27R approach.

I don't know about the feasibilty of creating a written down set of criteria for when we would de-alternate to use 27L as the landing runway in strong winds, maybe your flight ops folks should approach ours?

WF.

[Del Prado]

To answer point one, I believe 27L was the landing runway before 1500z last Friday.

If you landed 27R before 1500 either 27L was temporarily blocked or airborne holding was so excessive it was deemed necessary to land 6 per hour on the departure runway and you were one of those 'lucky' six.

[southern duel]

"TEAM" (6 per hour max) was in fact in use most of the day at LHR. This was to reduce inbound holding delays.

27R was the landing runway before 1500 so Hand Solo you must have been one of those aircraft. The skipper was obviously happy to accept 27R.

The only time we actually de alternated runways was at 20:05.

Regarding the use of 27R in high winds. A message is put on ATIS if the wind is between 170 and 230 degrees and excess of 15kts.

"Turbulence may be experienced during the last mile of final approach runway 27R"

The actual decision to use 27L for landing is ATC's with liasion and this is probably instigated on the reports from pilots who have had uncomfortable experiences landing 27R.

Anyway the winds have ceased now !!!!!

[Hand Solo]

Thanks for the responses. If I remember correctly 27R was still the main landing runway on Friday evening promulgated by the ATIS as we'd both expressed surprise at the decision, nor did we get the late change of runway instructions you normally get from Director. Neither I nor the Skipper were particularly happy with the decision but we both know there's normally no chance of the other runway without declaring an emergency, which is a rather extreme course of action. The dealternation occurred as we were on final approach with two of the previous four aircraft going around due to windshear and another reporting severe turbulence. We did actually ask for a visual switch at about 6d but were told it was unavailable as we were 3 miles behind a heavy for 27L. Just seemed a peculiar chain of events on the day.