Interesting comment in the minutes of the last meeting of the CAA-chaired Airport Performance Facilitation Group (remit: "to act as facilitator in the oversight and scrutiny of the implementation of the package of initiatives recommended by the South East Airports Taskforce to improve punctuality, increase resilience and reduce delay"):

"There was general agreement among industry representatives that if a solution could be found [to the capacity/resilience issue] for the Olympics, it might be something that could be used in the future."

Next APFG meeting is this coming Thursday.

<<Early vectoring off departure routes to enable increased runway capacity during recovery from disruption>>

We could do that 30 years ago but presumably it's forbidden now?

Members of the public complaining about off-track departures are told:

"There may be occasions when Air Traffic Control (ATC) direct aircraft off an NPR at an altitude below 4,000ft. This may be necessary in order to maintain safe separation from other aircraft or for other safety issues such as weather avoidance."

No mention about doing it simply to increase runway capacity.

All change.

The Minister has announced that early vectoring off the SID/NPRs will in fact be one of the additional freedoms to be available during Phase II of the trials, which start in July (and which will now last 9 months, rather than 3, up to the end of March 2013).

Other new freedoms will include a relaxation of the existing night quota to allow more arrivals before 0600, subject to schedule changes, and an increase of the TEAM limit from 6 to 12 landings per hour.

Or not, as the case may be ?

Here's what the trial website says, somewhat confusingly:

"The use of this procedure means that departures using southerly departure routes can be redirected from the departure route earlier than is usual. The re-directed aircraft will mostly remain within the boundaries of the existing departure routes."

Any controllers care to comment on what they understand by this ?

Are we talking about vectoring aircraft left or right of the nominal SID track, but still keeping them within the 3km-wide NPR swathe ? Would that provide sufficient increased separation between consecutive departures on the same SID to allow an increase in the departure rate ?

I'm still waiting to hear the clarification of what the vectoring off the SID is going to mean in practice. And what does "mostly" in the NPR mean ?

Hopefully it is worked out before they use it !

These instances will presumably be reported on, along with use of the other freedoms, so we'll see then what it's all about, assuming that individual flights which have been subject to this freedom are identified as such.

Having said that, it's only 6 days until the start of Phase II and a number of the Phase I reporting requirements still haven't been fulfilled: there's no detailed report for February, many of the daily summaries have errors which BAA have undertaken to rectify, but haven't (yet), and the promised data showing in detail which flights used which freedoms has still to materialise.

Wandsworth has leaked a bit more info on the Phase II trials :

Wandsworth Council - Let residents judge extra hour sleep plan

It looks as if the changes to early morning arrivals won't kick off until November.

That just about says it all.

The CAA's recommendations from Phase I included:

"We recommend that the differences between existing flexibility and the freedoms being tested by the trial are clearly explained at an earlier stage for the second phase of the trial."

I don't think that relying on a third party "leak" to learn additional details of the trial four days before the start of Phase II was quite what the CAA had in mind.

I was told tonight by some that had been "engaged" that we should expect to see a BAA advertorial in the local press soon.

It wasn't clear whether they supported the presentation or not !

It appeared as if there were some unusual routings late last night - ? associated with Operational Freedoms / the scramble to get delayed Olympic flights away on the "busiest day" ??

In particular BA199 to BOM was reported to be overhead in Chiswick at 23:23 which was hardly "mainly within the noise preferential route".

Maybe rules are only there to be broken !

Or maybe not:

"ATC can direct planes off the NPR at an altitude below 4,000ft if this is required for safe separation from other aircraft or for other safety issues such as weather avoidance. Therefore, if a plane is not following the NPR, it does not necessarily mean it is doing anything wrong. However, if you do have a query regarding a particular aircraft you may contact our Flight Evaluation Unit, who will able to assist."