David Sharpe
16th Sep 2013, 20:54
Not sure if there are any regular visitors to Palma Airport reading this, it is an airport that I take interest in as I take my annual August jaunt out there, staying up at Puerto Pollensa where a number of flights hit land to start the arrival procedure for Runway 24.
During my last visit, I heard on the airband a couple of UK departures which took what appeared to be a non standard departure. Most flights to the UK, when departing Runway 24, make a right turn and skirt the south West coast of the Island as they head up towards Barcelona. The flights in question made a left turn and headed out towards Menorca (the usual German departure route) and presumably then picked up the standard Mahon - UK flight routing at some point ? Presumably this route is only done as a necessity (to avoid a slot delay for example) as I assume it would add some time to the flight routing (I was just reminded of this tonight when watching Flight Radar 24 when a Monarch A300 operating to Gatwick followed the same departure route)
One further question. In spite of the large number of arrivals that the airport handles during August (I think I have read somwhere it is around the 10th busiest airport in Europe during the peak season) it is very rare that you see / hear of aircraft being asked to hold. Do the arrival controllers make more use of radar headings to vector the aircraft "around the houses" rather than have specific holding points, the usual inbound heading from Pollensa would be around 170 / 180 degrees, but you do see aircraft coming in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways during busy periods.
Many Thanks in advance.
During my last visit, I heard on the airband a couple of UK departures which took what appeared to be a non standard departure. Most flights to the UK, when departing Runway 24, make a right turn and skirt the south West coast of the Island as they head up towards Barcelona. The flights in question made a left turn and headed out towards Menorca (the usual German departure route) and presumably then picked up the standard Mahon - UK flight routing at some point ? Presumably this route is only done as a necessity (to avoid a slot delay for example) as I assume it would add some time to the flight routing (I was just reminded of this tonight when watching Flight Radar 24 when a Monarch A300 operating to Gatwick followed the same departure route)
One further question. In spite of the large number of arrivals that the airport handles during August (I think I have read somwhere it is around the 10th busiest airport in Europe during the peak season) it is very rare that you see / hear of aircraft being asked to hold. Do the arrival controllers make more use of radar headings to vector the aircraft "around the houses" rather than have specific holding points, the usual inbound heading from Pollensa would be around 170 / 180 degrees, but you do see aircraft coming in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways during busy periods.
Many Thanks in advance.