Heathrow 6am rule

[Curious Pax]

Flew Toronto-LHR a few weeks ago on a flight scheduled in at 0620. As we were taxiing for takeoff the Captain announced that due to strong tailwinds we would have to fly slower than usual, and hold before landing due to the 0600 opening time at LHR. As SLF this throws up 2 questions:

1) would it not be cheaper to stay on the ground at Toronto, and delay departure to avoid holding (and flying slower, though I don't know whether slower=cheaper or not)

2) if one of the favoured few who is scheduled to arrive before 0600 is delayed, and won't get there till after 6, does the first guy in the after 0600 club get to land early?

I could stir up a bit of a hornet's nest by asking why we had to park off stand at T4 when we arrived just after 6, but that could sidetrack the thread!! ;)

All fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I'd be interested to know the answers.

[Point Seven]

Curious Pax

With regard to your questions, I don't think that keeping the plane on the ground at Toronto would be of any value to the airline. The first reason is that all flights are made with reference to the met conditions and appropriate fuel is loaded. They'd know they may have to hold, they usually do first thing at EGLL anyway, and wouldn't want to risk a later departure, missing their place in the queue and having to hold on the ground for an hour to get a stand. The second reason is that it looks bad on the company's figures if a plane departs later than scheduled, even if it is for an operational reason it sill counts as a delay and we all know how BA hate delays...

With regard to the off pier parking at T4, as a controller at EGLL, the T4 situation every morning is diabolical. I'm not apportioning blame here i'm merely saying that there are too many planes and too few stands. The spare piered stands are obviously used up first, remembering that some of the stands have fuelled outbound a/c on them (not allowed to depart before 6am), so these are at a premium. I'm sure off pier and bussing is a chore for the pax, but it's a lot better than sitting in block 93 or 33 for an hour waiting for T11. Believe you me, it's been done...

I'm sure that the ground staff could elaborate far more than me, but I hope that this goes some way to answering your queries.

[ETOPS]

Curious Pax

Not being able to land before 0600z at LHR causes me huge problems. I fly B777's for a well known British Airline and many of my flights originate on the East coast of the US with scheduled arrival times just after this time.

The problem stems from the very limited number of flights allowed to land during the night (Night slots) which ends at 6 AM. Any early "day" arrivals would use up these precious slots and jepordise the schedule of those flights. If the north Atlantic tailwinds are stronger than average it puts me in a quandary as you have seen. It is often not possible to remain on the gate at the departure airfield due to the next service needing it (and the gate being owned by that carrier) and holding on the airfield with such a large aircraft simply gets in the way.

My usual tactic is to depart on time, taxi as slowly as possible and then fly at mach .80 as opposed to mach .84. A sensible amount of extra fuel is loaded to cover holding over the London area for upto 30 - 40 minutes.

Given the vagarities of ATC, weather and unexpected delays/improvements you can see why I'm paid over £6.50 hour to sort it all out!!