Incident @ Lgw 22mar Evening

[Dash-7 lover]

Aircraft blocked the rwy last night.......any news or info??

[Not Long Now]

Air Portugal burst tyres, had to wait for gear to be pinned and towed out of the way. About half an hour. Seven or eight diversions to SS/GW/HI/HH.
Interestingly, to me anyway, most of the diversions went within ten minutes or so of arriving.
Not a lot of holding fuel there then...

[TopBunk]

Not long now

you are correct, not much holding fuel .... but how much do you expect, as you say, the runway was closed for half an hour. LGW is effectively a single runway airport, so you can only use your diversion fuel to hold if you have an EAT. In this scenario it is unlikely ATC (you!) will commit to an EAT, therefore once contingency (if any left) has been used you have to divert. Contingency is likely to be 15 minutes (maybe 20 for some as per the AIC about 20 mins = no delay) but unlikely to be 30 mins.

Welcome to the real world of aviation from the pilots perspective.

[Lou Scannon]

Once again, the claim by BAA that the standby runway can be activated in 15 minutes, is shown to be untrue.

[30W]

Lou,

Out of interest where do they claim that?

They state it takes 15 minutes to activate the SBY R/W for a 'planned' closure of the main R/W, but never seen them quote a figure for 'unplanned' usage. The variables on being able to use the SBY are far too variable if there is an incident on the main R/W, as well as aircraft at holding points etc for the main R/W.

An unplanned swap is indeed a complex operation and generally could never be achieved in 15mins form an incident occuring/closing the main R/W.

[away from home]

There was no real need to activate the northern runway as everyone involved knew the aircraft would be moved reasonably quickly-as indeed it was. And as 30W states, changing to this runway when there is an accident on the main can be quite complex due to the amount of vehicles around the subject aircraft.

[LateLandingClearance]

As 30W states, 15 minutyes is the expected time with no runway available between closure of main and opening on northern runway, when the changeover is planned . The time taken to achieve an unexpected changeover can be an hour or more.

In this incident, as the aircraft in question had started to vacate the main runway, but just not made it quite far enough to fully vacated, the emergency runway would most likely be unavailable as well due to the stricken aircraft being between the two runways.

[BOAC]

This topic has been explored quite a few times on Pprune, and LLC has put it very succinctly. There IS NO 'emergency' runway at LGW. Some pilots seem unable to understand this. I understand that the change CAN also require aircraft to be towed away from some of the south terminal stands to make 26R available due to obstacle clearances. Passengers may be rushing around the airport on the grass, over taxyways and across runways if an evacuation takes place. The 'distressed' aircraft, as LLC says, could obstruct BOTH runways.

In the event of an unexpected closure of the main at LGW, unless you have both extreme optimism AND AT LEAST 30 mins of HOLDING fuel - in which case you may well be looking for another job:D (unless the weather is bad) - you are as well pushing off to an alternate to 'splash and dash'.

Hopefully, this answers Interestingly, to me anyway, most of the diversions went within ten minutes or so of arriving. Not a lot of holding fuel there then... for 'not long now'?

[Not Long Now]

I understand the reasons given above, and personally I was more 'pleasantly' surprised that people were diverting early. Many many times when there have been delays for whatever reason, and often with definitive EATs issued, pilots seem to wait until the last possible minute before diverting. This usually results in a diversion from the middle of a full stack rather than from a position much easier to arrange it from (in ATC terms), usually higher and further out from the stacks.