Heathrow before the Europa terminal and Queens building

[DaveReidUK]

I don't recall seeing any 05R landings during the various spells I had working in the CTA in the mid-70s, so they certainly weren't as common as those on 23L. That's hardly surprising given the relative frequency of strong NE vs SW winds in this part of the world.

Interestingly, the extract below from a July 1968 Aerad chart shows 15R/33L as having recently closed (for the construction of T3 Pier 7 for the 747), but 05L/23R still available. At that point, the latter would have been by far the shortest (and narrowest) of Heathrow's runways (6255' x 250') and I don't think it survived much longer, as by then it was constraining any extension of T3 Pier 5. The current control tower also stands on the old 05L/23R footprint.

[treadigraph]

The elevations are interesting, it really is as near as dammit flat! Bit mountainous in the NW corner...

I recall seeing a few landings on 23 over the years (including a BA 747 with some alarming looking flames while reverse thrust was deployed) but never anything on 05 - but maybe I avoided going to Heathrow when a spending a few hours on the roof of the Queen's Building/T2 would have been in a chilly NE wind!

[bentbanana]

Im a bit late to the party - used to travel to LHR as a teenager in the 70s - the 140 bus of course! Hanging out of the front windows and unscrewing the light bulbs......
Sometimes also used to bike from South Harrow with mates and spent time riding around the perimiter road - one spectacular sight was a whole line up of 747 waiting to depart the then 10R - BA-AC-AI-PA-TW - I wish Id had a camera handy!!
Later in life actually worked there for various foreign airlines - I remember one stormy night 05R was being used (late 80s??) and the captain on the flight I was handling kept asking if he could use 10R but was out of crosswind limits - he didnt look too pleased about 05R - but departed all the same!

[GeeRam]

Originally Posted by DaveReidUK

I don't recall seeing any 05R landings during the various spells I had working in the CTA in the mid-70s, so they certainly weren't as common as those on 23L. That's hardly surprising given the relative frequency of strong NE vs SW winds in this part of the world.

I thought landing on 05R were stopped by early 1981, because of the starting of the building of Terminal 4, with any 05R landings being far too close to the works and site boundary of the new T4..?
I started on the T4 site in April '81 and there were no 05R landings in my time on site there between then and 1984 when I left.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by GeeRam

I thought landing on 05R were stopped by early 1981, because of the starting of the building of Terminal 4, with any 05R landings being far too close to the works and site boundary of the new T4..?

That's entirely possible.

Never having seen any means that I have no idea when they stopped.

[PAXboy]

DaveReidUK reported:

The last movement on 23 (23L) was a landing by a South African Airways 747 on 27th October 2002. Even in those days, using 23 (in strong south-westerly winds) was a PITA because it meant that the stands at the end of the T2 piers weren't able to be used at the same time.

[DaveReidUK]

Well yes, I think we've established that the last movement on 05R was probably some years prior to the last movement on 23L.

Same bit of concrete, different direction.

[rog747]

05R
BA 747 landing March 1977

pic credit. Kjell Nilsson

Last time I recall flying off 05R was in one of our F27's (BMA) in howling NNE winds/sleet/blizzard and the Tower told the skipper to STOP during a very slow T/O roll.
We had plenty of runway left to start again.
The conflict was one landing on 10R and another 3 miles behind him.

I cannot ever recalling landing on 05R but may have done when I was a boy with British Eagle in a Britannia.

[DaveReidUK]

Next challenge - find a photo of any movement on 05L or 23R !

[pax britanica]

Rog 747. As I mentioned in an earlier post we came back from Faro our honeymoon on I think March 27 1977 and landed on 05R. Nut your pic could have been taken a few days earlier because I think UK was in the grip of biting strong NE winds and snow for a few days that month.

Threshold shots would have been hard as not much public space around the 05 threshold only roads or rivers and it would have been bloody cold that week as well.

I seem to remember that 05s had very inferior approach lights on wooden poles

PB

[FAL]

The Master Robert on the then A30 was mentioned earlier. It can be seen in the background of this photo from late 1967. At the time the walls and ceiling of the Pit and Paddock bar carried signatures and comments from many of the then current F1 and Sports car racing drivers. All that was lost in a later re-decoration. The photo is taken across the road at the Ace of Spades service station and is the day after the cancellation of the 1967 RAC Rally of Great Britain due to a Foot and Mouth disease outbreak. It shows Lars Helmer, co-driver of later world rally champion Bjorn Waldegard with a Porsche 911 of the Swedish Scania Vabis team (who taught the Porsche factory how to prepare cars for rough forest rallies). Next to VHS Supplies across the road who were also mentioned was later the site of Automania Accessories who sponsored my own first International rally entries.

[GeeRam]

The Ace of Spades service station is also now long gone as well.

You can still see the remains of the low level white brick wall which bordered the footpath and where the entrance's crossed the footpaths, and there are two big advertising hoardings on the waste ground of where the service station used to be now.

[WHBM]

The office I described on the A4 at Cranford, Heathrow House, was a nightmare to get taxis to from a Heathrow terminal, where they had been ranked up for an hour or two anticipating a job to The City at least. It was next door to another hotel, the Berkeley Arms, which has also been demolished and a Doubletree built on the site. But if you asked the taxi driver for the hotel instead, which didn't have its own shuttle bus, they knew they could be given a ticket by the doorman which allowed them back to the head of the taxi queue at the airport. Driver still grumbled though.

Probably early 1980s, when standby transatlantic tickets had their time, the company there, based in Detroit, had a miserly US managing director Mr X who wrote around that travel to the US, which there was quite a lot of, should henceforth be by standby, "as it's cheapest and in my experience there are always seats". What a pain to have to go to the airport twice, once when the ticket office opened and once for the afternoon flight. Said MD was also provided with a Daimler and chauffeur - the classic sort of such driver, had the job for years and seen all the top management come and go. One morning the manager of the Newcastle office had come down on the first BA domestic to a meeting, and was walking out of Terminal 1 when he sees said chauffeur standing in the ticket counter queue. So he goes up to him. "Hello, what are you dong here". "Oh, Mr X is going to Detroit this afternoon so I've to come over for his standby ticket. Hang on a minute and I'll give you a lift back to the office ".

It's surprising that over the decades Heathrow never sorted out short distance taxi journeys from the terminals.

[India Four Two]

I was just looking at the historical imagery on GE. Here's one from 2004, where 23L is still marked as an active runway, but must only be used as a taxiway, due to the proximity of the parked Concorde. The runway number and the TDZ markings survived until 2006, but no X markings were applied.

[chevvron]

Originally Posted by WHBM

The office I described on the A4 at Cranford, Heathrow House, was a nightmare to get taxis to from a Heathrow terminal, .

When NATS moved out of the CTB in the Central Area, units like AIS moved to a 'Heathrow House' on the A4 as did the admin/personnel offices from Sibson Court. Unfortunately this also meant their medical branch at the CTB also moved so my annual visit to Heathrow for my ATCO medical (parked my car in Woking and got the coach from the railway station to the Central Area which stopped right outside the medical centre) had to be done elsewhere; nice little money spinner for NATS it used to be as many airline pilots would get their medicals done there too.
I presume this is the same Heathrow House as the one mentioned above, however I thnk all these units have now moved to Whiteley, Hants.

[WHBM]

Yes, I think Heathrow House (still there) had worked through a few tenants, including BA, as I recall a continuing problem with telephone crossed lines with a BA back office elsewhere (in passing an aspect of telecoms that has gone completely away). The company took over the whole building some time in the late 1970s, and moved out 10 years later. The building had a substantial "refacing" of the glazed front A4 elevation, including much more rigorous double glazing. Phone number 01-759-6522 I recall (which appears thus to have been circulating uselessly in my brain these last 35 years ...).

[Georgeablelovehowindia]

Originally Posted by WHBM

Yes, I think Heathrow House (still there) had worked through a few tenants, including BA, as I recall a continuing problem with telephone crossed lines with a BA back office elsewhere (in passing an aspect of telecoms that has gone completely away). The company took over the whole building some time in the late 1970s, and moved out 10 years later. The building had a substantial "refacing" of the glazed front A4 elevation, including much more rigorous double glazing. Phone number 01-759-6522 I recall (which appears thus to have been circulating uselessly in my brain these last 35 years ...).

759 being derived from SKYport on the old rotary dialling telephones. British Eagle's telephone number was SKYport 3611, BOAC's was SKYport 5511 as late as April 1969, but by October 1972 it had changed to 01-759-5511.

[G-ARZG]

Originally Posted by WHBM

The office I described on the A4 at Cranford, Heathrow House, was a nightmare to get taxis to from a Heathrow terminal, where they had been ranked up for an hour or two anticipating a job to The City at least. It was next door to another hotel, the Berkeley Arms, which has also been demolished and a Doubletree built on the site. But if you asked the taxi driver for the hotel instead, which didn't have its own shuttle bus, they knew they could be given a ticket by the doorman which allowed them back to the head of the taxi queue at the airport. Driver still grumbled though.

Probably early 1980s, when standby transatlantic tickets had their time, the company there, based in Detroit, had a miserly US managing director Mr X who wrote around that travel to the US, which there was quite a lot of, should henceforth be by standby, "as it's cheapest and in my experience there are always seats". What a pain to have to go to the airport twice, once when the ticket office opened and once for the afternoon flight. Said MD was also provided with a Daimler and chauffeur - the classic sort of such driver, had the job for years and seen all the top management come and go. One morning the manager of the Newcastle office had come down on the first BA domestic to a meeting, and was walking out of Terminal 1 when he sees said chauffeur standing in the ticket counter queue. So he goes up to him. "Hello, what are you dong here". "Oh, Mr X is going to Detroit this afternoon so I've to come over for his standby ticket. Hang on a minute and I'll give you a lift back to the office ".

It's surprising that over the decades Heathrow never sorted out short distance taxi journeys from the terminals.

​​​​​​It was sorted - cabs returning to the feeder rank within a certain time period could queue-jump. Didn't stop the cabbies whinging though.

[SimonPaddo]

Anyone else willing to admit to buying JP World Airline Fleets from VHF supplies for spotting?

[GAXLN]

Originally Posted by GeeRam

I thought landing on 05R were stopped by early 1981, because of the starting of the building of Terminal 4, with any 05R landings being far too close to the works and site boundary of the new T4..?
I started on the T4 site in April '81 and there were no 05R landings in my time on site there between then and 1984 when I left.

Use of 05R continued for a while longer after 1981. I had just the one landing on 05R which was 9th December 1983 on board BA315 inbound from Paris CDG, operated by Tristar-1 G-BBAH. IIRC it was a very windy night and the total flight time for the flight that I recorded was one hour twenty-seven minutes as we held for some time due to the weather conditions and the use of runway 05R. It was a pleasant surprise to me when I realised it was a 05R approach as, at that time, I lived between Staines and Laleham and a very rare opportunity to fly directly over the area at low level. Sadly, it was dark so not the view it might have been dodging amongst the clouds on a daytime flight. Certainly by this time use of 05 was pretty unusual but if the weather conditions were "right" it was still in use at this time and I believe for a while longer.