I was travelling back from DUS to LHR last night and would like to congratulate the BA crew on how they handled the situation. The cap'n came out, explained the situation and we were served with refreshments by the cabin crew and kept up to date with the slot time until we were ready to go.

As far as contingency planning by BAA or ATC for such a situation.......well i'd have to side with 411A and wonder why there wasn't a 'mobile' control tower on hand to keep the fluidity of the imminent landing/departing aircrafts going. These things happen seldomly, but when they do the effects can be far reaching. It would be nice to think that in such a crowded airspace as the London TMA there should be a fall-back system that should there have really been a fire, that it wouldn't have necessitated the amount of time to set up again in the old tower.

Btw, was the old equipment left ready for such a situation ?

Anyway, well done to all in difficult circumstances.


Regards


SHJ

If you think LHR can simply switch into a back-up operation, you need your head examined! How? Ground movement control would be a disaster. Progress would slow to an absolute stall that all traffic may as well just hold position or divert. The operation would become dangerous. Some sense instead of blind calls for back-up would be a start!

I too suffered T5 last night - not too bad a show from BA given the high number of cancellations. A nice bed for the night and a new ticket for this morning although would have been easier to announce canx at 19.45 rather that 21.00 when we were unlikely to land in GVA anyway.

Highlight of the evening was being dealt with by Jeremy Spake at the BA Cust Service desk - is he T5's latest weapon ??

Anyone know were the A380 parks at Gatwick?

A380 at Gatwick
 

It looked like it was on the taxyway on Sunday night.

Do those who think we in LHR ATC should be able to immediately switch to a contingency facility understand that to do so we would need to fully staff the back up facility 24/7 to enable us to do this?

As Timelapse says, we do have a back up VCR, as well as an evac plan. To be an effective contingency, by definition it needs to be some distance away from our main VCR to provide redundancy. That distance means that it does take a period of time for ATCOs and Assistants to get there and open things up.

What one ?

J?