Olympic airspace validation
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Many hurdles still to overcome?
A few years ago, EGCC handled the Champions League football thingy.
About 70,000 Italians turned up over 2 days in about 200 extra airliners and 60 biz-jets.
No simulations were laid on, we just did it.
Like the ignition of The Olympic Flame, in ATC terms, this is just a flash in the pan.
As the late Ron Ridler would have said,....."Shut up and get on with it"!
A few years ago, EGCC handled the Champions League football thingy.
About 70,000 Italians turned up over 2 days in about 200 extra airliners and 60 biz-jets.
No simulations were laid on, we just did it.
Like the ignition of The Olympic Flame, in ATC terms, this is just a flash in the pan.
As the late Ron Ridler would have said,....."Shut up and get on with it"!
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Upwards of 200 HofS flights alone, never mind passengers... then the estimated 1000-1500 extra VFR flights a day.
Slightly different than the Champions League.
New airspace designed to deal with it all, airspace that already suffers proportionally more infringers than any other in the UK.
Not exactly a flash in the pan Zooker, and nothing like the footy.
As for the Sims, I believe they have actually been going pretty well, with SRG happy too...
Slightly different than the Champions League.
New airspace designed to deal with it all, airspace that already suffers proportionally more infringers than any other in the UK.
Not exactly a flash in the pan Zooker, and nothing like the footy.
As for the Sims, I believe they have actually been going pretty well, with SRG happy too...
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Only jesting folks,
I guess Farnborough will have it's work cut out too. Great shame they never built Maplins back in the 70s, what with this and all the development east of Tower Bridge. It would have made Clacton interesting.
Plenty of parking space at Fairford, or do the games clash with RIAT? The MOD could do with a few extra pounds in the Kitty. O.K. it is the wrong side of London, but has good links to the M4.
I guess Farnborough will have it's work cut out too. Great shame they never built Maplins back in the 70s, what with this and all the development east of Tower Bridge. It would have made Clacton interesting.
Plenty of parking space at Fairford, or do the games clash with RIAT? The MOD could do with a few extra pounds in the Kitty. O.K. it is the wrong side of London, but has good links to the M4.
I did my University dissertation looking at the inflexibility of London's major airports coping with additional movements during the Olympic Games.
Didn't look at airspace but as far as runway capacity goes, Heathrow and Gatwick have got their hands tied so to speak.
Luton, Stansted, Southend, Biggin, Oxford etc... are the ones having to essentially bail them out.
Didn't look at airspace but as far as runway capacity goes, Heathrow and Gatwick have got their hands tied so to speak.
Luton, Stansted, Southend, Biggin, Oxford etc... are the ones having to essentially bail them out.
2 s
As I said to No. 2 son recently, you lot have got management over a barrel.
Refuse to do simulation on a day off unless there are some really good 'sweeties' in return. Making AAVAs pensionable for a start!
IIRC we all got extra for Dec31st 1999 because of the fear of the dreaded 'Millenium Bug'.
Refuse to do simulation on a day off unless there are some really good 'sweeties' in return. Making AAVAs pensionable for a start!
IIRC we all got extra for Dec31st 1999 because of the fear of the dreaded 'Millenium Bug'.
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Luton, Stansted, Southend, Biggin, Oxford etc... are the ones having to essentially bail them out.
Bailing out indicates helping the major airports. Nothing is further from the truth - the 'major' airports will work to their capacity attracting all the extra business they can handle. Oxford, Southend, Biggin Hill etc are fighting as hard as they can to get the extra, leftover business; the scraps in reality (and there will be plenty of scraps to go round).
If anything it will be the ANSP who 'bails' out these 'minor' aerdromes by providing the service to the aircraft that the airports can't...
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If the night noise restrictions were cancelled for the period, the matter could be solved fairly quickly. Unfortunately, staff numbers in every department have been shaved so dramatically that there would no staff to handle the traffic.
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Going back to the start of the thread and the Champions League match at Manchester. There were still inbounds in the hold after kick off!!! That's what just getting on with it achieves.
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Why are they only simulating the new arrival routings? Do they not think these aircraft are going to leave somehow? Considering the changes between now and then, I can see another big mess approaching.......
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Going back to the start of the thread and the Champions League match at Manchester. There were still inbounds in the hold after kick off!!! That's what just getting on with it achieves
Not quite correct. They were the first string of the Departures...who were planned to land at Full Time + 15, so the Italians wouln't have to put up with Manchester for longer than necessary......
I was on Afternoons that day in the Tower
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Chiglet,
I too was on an afternoon and was sat watching them go round the DAYNE hold at kick off time....and they had been there quite some time..........
Let's not over-analyse this event because it has long been regarded as not being one of NATS' finest hours (amongst a few others!)
I too was on an afternoon and was sat watching them go round the DAYNE hold at kick off time....and they had been there quite some time..........
Let's not over-analyse this event because it has long been regarded as not being one of NATS' finest hours (amongst a few others!)
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A couple of weeks ago there was a CL final held at Wembley. There were Probably around 200 associated biz jets that used the London airfields plus lots of extra charter flights into Luton & Stansted etc, many of which departed that evening/night.
Things seemed to work OK on this occasion....
Things seemed to work OK on this occasion....
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The Champions League final this year was small fry compared to the Olympics.
For a start one of the sides was from the UK (most of the fans probably from London
).
As stated previously, the Olympics will have around 150 visiting heads of State and the associated precautions. There will be Aircraft landing at Airport A which then need to reposition to park at Airport X due lack of space etc etc etc.
Then you have different peaks of traffic from individual countries that perform well during particular events.
There are issues to resolve, but on the whole I understand the nut is largely cracked.
For a start one of the sides was from the UK (most of the fans probably from London
).As stated previously, the Olympics will have around 150 visiting heads of State and the associated precautions. There will be Aircraft landing at Airport A which then need to reposition to park at Airport X due lack of space etc etc etc.
Then you have different peaks of traffic from individual countries that perform well during particular events.
There are issues to resolve, but on the whole I understand the nut is largely cracked.
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You're right barnaby, the Champions League (whichever year we talk about) is small fry.
The Atkins capacity report (available from all good Department of Transport bookstores) is predicting 3000 extra business aviation flights, 150 head of State flights, between 1300 and 1500 extra helicopter flights each day, and many extra Olympic 'family' and support flights.
There will also be an unknown number of flights possibly using airfields close to the Eurostar and ferry terminals in continental Europe as well.
The mention of removing night time curfews is moot because the travelling public don't want to arrive in London after midnight or before the crack of dawn and so there would be little or no take up of any extra capacity at those times. Remember that most of these extra flights are being chartered, so the customer has a big say on when they want to travel, not the other way around
The Atkins capacity report (available from all good Department of Transport bookstores) is predicting 3000 extra business aviation flights, 150 head of State flights, between 1300 and 1500 extra helicopter flights each day, and many extra Olympic 'family' and support flights.
There will also be an unknown number of flights possibly using airfields close to the Eurostar and ferry terminals in continental Europe as well.
The mention of removing night time curfews is moot because the travelling public don't want to arrive in London after midnight or before the crack of dawn and so there would be little or no take up of any extra capacity at those times. Remember that most of these extra flights are being chartered, so the customer has a big say on when they want to travel, not the other way around
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10W et al,
The bit in the Atkins report you've missed is the statement that the extra flights such as head of state, Olympic family and busness flights will generally take place during the 3 days before and the 3 days after the main Olympics.
This makes the figures even worse as it is not spread over the whole of the time the Olympics take place.
Then on top of that there is, as you state, the anticipated extra helicopter flights (upwards of 1300 per day, allegedly) and the fact that Paris is putting a lot of effort into selling itself as the place to stay for the Olympics... nicer, safer city than London (not my words), and only a short hop across the channel... and that hop will be done by aircraft in the main if Paris gets the numbers of visitors it wants... Eurostar does not have the capacity.
Allied to all this is the fact that there is new temporary restricted airspace with a few rules attached... the LTMA already suffers an inordinate amount of infringers (though it has improved drastically over the past 2 years). These infrngers tend to be from local airfields that you would expect to know better... throw into the mix people flying around who don't have a clue about the airpace and it could be fun.
The main traffic will be fine. It will be busy but as usual the engineers, ATSAs and ATCOs will make it work (despite the best efforts of management
).
The problem will come from responses to infringing aircraft... UK PLC will (rightly) be a lot twitchier than normal wrt security. I'd anticipate that response will be less measured i.e. less time taken for intelligence gathering before sending in assets to investigate, with the usual ensuing knock on effect in very busy airspace.
That is, in my opinion, where the biggest problem could arise.
The bit in the Atkins report you've missed is the statement that the extra flights such as head of state, Olympic family and busness flights will generally take place during the 3 days before and the 3 days after the main Olympics.
This makes the figures even worse as it is not spread over the whole of the time the Olympics take place.
Then on top of that there is, as you state, the anticipated extra helicopter flights (upwards of 1300 per day, allegedly) and the fact that Paris is putting a lot of effort into selling itself as the place to stay for the Olympics... nicer, safer city than London (not my words), and only a short hop across the channel... and that hop will be done by aircraft in the main if Paris gets the numbers of visitors it wants... Eurostar does not have the capacity.
Allied to all this is the fact that there is new temporary restricted airspace with a few rules attached... the LTMA already suffers an inordinate amount of infringers (though it has improved drastically over the past 2 years). These infrngers tend to be from local airfields that you would expect to know better... throw into the mix people flying around who don't have a clue about the airpace and it could be fun.
The main traffic will be fine. It will be busy but as usual the engineers, ATSAs and ATCOs will make it work (despite the best efforts of management
). The problem will come from responses to infringing aircraft... UK PLC will (rightly) be a lot twitchier than normal wrt security. I'd anticipate that response will be less measured i.e. less time taken for intelligence gathering before sending in assets to investigate, with the usual ensuing knock on effect in very busy airspace.
That is, in my opinion, where the biggest problem could arise.