Lambourne/Ockham approaches to EGLL

[Lawyerboy]

Afternoon all

Sorry, I'm about to be boring now. I happen to live in Spitalfields in London and whenever I'm out on my terrace I get to see you lot fly southbound over my head before banking right to follow the river down for a landing on 27L/R.

I've today discovered I can't read STAR or approach charts worth a damn so I'm afraid you have to put up with some daft questions, which occurred to me last night:

1. What's your altitude just before you turn right onto finals?

2. How many track miles are you from the threshold at that point?

Ta muchly,
LB.

[Gonzo]

I'd estimate between 3000 and 5000 feet, and a distance from touchdown of between 12-17 miles. I work in the tower myself, not Approach, so it's only an estiamte ;).

Gonzo

[This message has been edited by Gonzo (edited 18 June 2001).]

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

It's not just LAM and OCK traffic - it includes traffic from Bovingdon and Biggin too!

We descend inbound traffic to 4000 feet (to keep them above London City stuff) until around 13 miles from touchdown, thence down to 3000 ft. After that they follow the ILS - a descent angle of 3 degrees until they reach Heathrow. Spitalfields is about 15 miles east of Heathrow so most of the time the inbound traffic will be around 4-5000 ft when it passes you.

[Lawyerboy]

Director - I shouldn't imagine the Bovingdon/Biggin traffic passes over my head though... :)

In any case, much obliged to you both. It's always interesting to see just how wrong you can be - I always estimated the stuff flying over my little house was at around 2-3000 feet, not 4-5000.

[InTheAir]

I was as curious as you too (about a year ago). If you can invest in a radio scanner (A Pro-74 costs about £80) it might help your understanding of our beloved LTMA. Tune into frequency 120.400 and watch them, while you listen to them.

I sometimes get the feeling that HEATHROW DIRECTOR and the like deliberately position those jets to fly over my house (at 180 degrees) after which they show me that beautiful turn on to 240 (over LCY) to establish 27L/R - thank you guys, as you remind me where I want to be one day, very soon.

[This message has been edited by InTheAir (edited 19 June 2001).]

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Lawyerboy. If you can see the final approach track you will see traffic from all four holding areas, otherwise where do you suppose the traffic from BNN/BIG goes? Traffic from all four holding stacks is sequenced on to one landing runway so they will all end up on the same final approach. As you live a little north of the centrelines for the westerly runways you will see mainly Bovingdon and Lambourn traffic overhead but you may well see Biggin and Ockham traffic which is routed through the centrelines and turned on to final approach from the north, although this doesn't happen too often. The actual routes of the aircraft from the stacks to the final approach are determined by the approach radar directors (my colleagues and me!) and not by STAR or approach charts. Procedural approaches - ie those flown entirely by the flight crews are almost unheard of at Heathrow because of the traffic density (another daily record recently - I think it was 1350+ but can't recall the exact figure)..

If you want any more info please shout...

[Lawyerboy]

Director - noted, I simply didn't imagine that Biggin traffic, for example, would be routed over the centreline and then back north to south over my head to turn right onto finals. It would be interesting to see some of the routings you're sometimes required to give due to traffic density or other reasons.

[burp]

Lawyerboy,

Re routeings from the stacks, draw a wiggly line from any of them which ultimately ends at the threshold of the runway and it'll have been flown at sometime :)

If you go to the following link you'll find someone in the world of simulated ATC has gone to the trouble of drawing diagrams and also virtually reprinting the Heathrow Manual of ATC, poor soul.

http://www.satuk.org/satuk/London/EGLL/egllproc.htm#Traffic

Burp.

[???pax]

Just a quick question regarding the holds...

Do the "all singing and dancing" aircraft of today fly the hold automatically, or does the pilot have to execute a rate x turn and then start the clock for 1 min when abeam the fix e.t.c....??

If it can be done automatically do any of you have a go at hand-flying it when you're in the right mood??

Regards,
???pax

[DOC.400]

I was looking east out of the window of a previous house in Virgina Water a few years ago, and intrigued by some lights in the sky. With the help of my southern England map and a compass I realised I could see the Ockham hold, the Biggin hold, planes coming off the BNN hold AND the LAM hold, the latter about 30 miles away. This, together with an airband radio, whiled away a pleasant few minutes while my young son (then 12 months) went to sleep -beats bedtime stories anyday!!
I vis was rarely that good........

[Winston]

???pax, in modern a/c we can program the hold in the flight management computer amd the aircraft will fly the correct entry and the hold via the autopilot. we can either ask it to fly a time or distant outbound. In the type of a/c I fly it doesn't lay off drift to allow for wind but it varies the rate of turns to allow for drift. crackin piece of kit!! don't know anyone who would choose to hand fly coz we are normally very busy by then and it needs both of us in the loop and watchin outside.
Question for Heathrow controllers... I live in East Dulwich which also seems to be near one of the centre lines. Any idea how far out it is and is it near the final turn in??

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

DOC.400. Reminds me of a joke we played on a supervisor some years ago (yes, in days gone by we had some real fun in the Tower!). At the end of a night duty as he walked up the stairs at 6.30 to prepare for the handover to the oncoming watch he was confronted with the GMC controller looking south through a pair of binocs and saying to the Air controller "tell 'em they can drop the Speedbird at Ockham now". The Sup asked what was happening and was told there had been a radar failure so we were helping out the guys downstairs by running the approach visually. You could actually see the hairs on his head turning grey!!! (Sorry, G, if you're reading this).

[sky9]

Lawyerboy, Amused to see that you had incorrectly assessed the height of the aircraft over your pad; wasn’t it you that defended some poor old sole who was accused of low flying a couple of years ago?

[Lawyerboy]

Ah, were it only so. 'Fraid not, sky9, that's Flying Lawyer you're thinking of, that is.