Heathrow extra runway
 

In the continuing furore re the extra runway little or nothing has been said about the effect on the Air Traffic System. Why is this ?

It is assumed the ATC system will be able to adapt to whatever the politicians decide!

"We don't know exactly how it's going to work, but it will be OK" seems to be flavour of the month at the moment. :O

4 Greens,

The thing is, until the government make a decision, and the public consultations start, I doubt those working on it will be talking about it. There is already a lot of misunderstanding out there about ATC around London, any 'information' put out now would be based on many, many assumptions and very heavily burdened by caveats, which tend to get ignored/forgotten by those with agendas.

For some time now the ATC in South East England has been overloaded. It is rare that there is no holding on arrivals. An extra runway will exacerbate this. If one were a cynic one would think that NATS dont say anything because more aircraft means more income.

So more runway capacity = more aircraft holding, waiting to land?

Maybe, maybe not.

The fact is that there are so many other variables involved, nobody can say for sure what the impact of a third runway would be on airborne holding, either in the short- or long-term.

If the government allowed H24 operations like they used to before about 1971 and like they still do in most other civilised countries, there would be no need for an extra runway.

Chevron 24 hour operations would help, however airlines don't want to fly when there is no demand. So if passengers don't won't to fly at 0300 then the airlines won't use the runway slot.

3rd runway, ATC will play catch up on the procedures and controller training when and if a decision is ever made!!when I say catch up I mean panic!!

I bet there would be plenty of demand if flights were offered during the night!

I suspect that, even with no restrictions in those days, there were fewer night flights pre-1971 than the current 6,000 or so per annum.

Clearly the government has decided that removing the night quota restrictions would not be politically acceptable. The argument that H24 operation would provide as much additional capacity as a 3rd runway only holds water if you assume there is demand throughout the night for around 80 movements per hour, for which I've not seen any evidence.

That would mean that the ATCOs would have to stay awake during nightshifts...

During the summer Gatwick is busy up until 0230, but then it's dead until 0600.

Winter it's very quiet.

Places like Dubai are busy during the night because people want to be at their destination or leave during the day.

HD, there would not be the demand for flights during the night.

If people left Heathrow during the night, they could be in New York early in the morning.

If 3rd runway was built then I think capacity for the three runways combined would be capped so as to provide more resilience than the present declared capacity for the two runway operation which have very little resilience should an unplanned runway closure occur or low visibility procedures are put in place.

I read somewhere recently that Heathrow Airport have indicated that it would not permit scheduled movements to land before 0530hrs local should a 3rd runway be approved. I understand that presently it is not before 0430hrs. Whilst this may give noise relief for an extra hour to those under the arrival flight path it's unlikely to affect the number of arrivals before the 0600hrs end of curfew. Heathrow's present night movement quota limits movements between 2330-0600hrs to an average of 15 to 16 per night. Virtually all are arrivals and which can be achieved for the 30min period between 0530 and 0600hrs, so this noise relief offering is likely to have little or no effect on Heathrow's business.

I attended a presentation by Sir Howard Davies about U.K. airport capacity 18 months ago, and the case for another R/W at EGLL. An extremely knowledgable member of the audience asked him about noise limitations, and why the present restrictions were still based around the operation of Tridents, 707s and VC10s?
SHD didn't have an answer. It's time to move on. Road traffic generates more noise than modern jet aircraft.

Landing 16 heavies on a single runway in 30 minutes can't be done.

It's not surprising he didn't, because they aren't.

Noise restrictions at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are defined relative to the range of aircraft types that currently operate there, as reference to the current Noise Restrictions Notice will confirm. Tridents and VC-10s are notable by their absence from the document.

Luton departures are quite often held up by aircraft heading either into or out of Northholt for some reason so I have also wondered how a third runway at Heathrow would affect Luton with regard to ATC.

Theoretically you could get 16 Heavies down in 30 mins with a few minutes to spare.

Applying 4nm spacing generally gets a landing rate of 36-37 per hour.

TBS aims to get 90s between Heavies.

Adding A380s would lower the landing rate, but ideally you'd bunch them together as there's no wake requirement between A380s. You could even get to a stage where the overall landing rate would go up because of that.

Politically there will never repeat never all night ops at UK airports. Too many people live near airports as this is a small country. All these people have a vote.