LGW second runway "by the back door" going ahead.
 

Plans will be submitted for "routine use" of 08L/ 26R to public consultation this Thursday...

Beeb:

"Gatwick Airport is due to unveil plans to use its emergency runway to increase capacity.
The airport's latest draft plan is set to be released on Thursday and will go out to public consultation, a spokesman said.
The emergency runway would be used for smaller aircraft departures, as part of future growth plans.
Opponents to expansion at the West Sussex airport have called it "a second runway by the back door".
An airport spokesman said it was "exploring how to make best use of its existing runways, including the possibility of bringing its existing standby runway into routine use".
"This would deliver an incremental increase in capacity that complements the expansion schemes of other airports across the South East."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-45861559

Well you certainly wouldn't want a runway by your back door would you?

LGW second runway "by the back door" going ahead
 

No, it's not even close to "going ahead" - there are a ton of legal and operational hurdles that would have to be overcome first, not least the safety case around using a pair of runways only 200 m apart at the same time.

How odd that this story should present itself just days after one regarding rumours on the NYSE that GIP were considering selling their stake in Gatwick.. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...investor-group

One could almost surmise that they were trying to increase the 'potential' value of their asset... despite the fact that as has rightly already been said this is a long way from a reality...They stand to make a lot of money anyway but they'd have made even more if they could have sold it on with planning permission for a second runway. No different from doing the same with a small house on a large plot of land. This will just have to do I suppose.

Tegel Airport in berlin operates 2 runways and they are certainly less than 200m apart.

We will presumably find out more once the plan is published, but the somewhat sketchy announcement so far does not suggest that a TXL-type, segregated mode operation is what Gatwick has in mind.

The quote said departure runway. So assume that a small slower aircraft such as a turbo-prop is given departure clearance on the short runway after an aircraft has successfully taken off from the long runway with the next inbound say 1.5 miles finals. So each short runway departure is between runway movements on the main runway. The SIDs would need to turn say 30Deg to the North after take off to keep clear of any missed approach on the main runway. There may also be wake issues from the departure on the main affecting the departure on the short runway. It could raise the airport acceptance rate if they have significant numbers of small turboprop aircraft.
Don't expect the idea to be operational next year though!

Düsseldorf has two very close parallel runways in use as well, the northern one being the "main".
How often is Gatwick's reserve runway used these days?

There's no "by the back door" about it. There was an agreement in place, which has expired or is to expire very soon. Without any new agreement, Gatwick should be free to use both runways subject to the necessary approvals.

Leaving aside the other issues, it appears that the "by the back door" accusation is a reference to the (then) BAA's 1979 undertaking that they would not begin construction before 2019 of anything that could ultimately become an operational runway in its own right, and West Sussex CC's agreement, based on that understanding, that they would not in turn object to the construction of the emergency runway.

Runway separation
 

How far apart are pairs of runways normally? Is there a standard or recommendation?

ICAO Doc 9643 - Manual on Simultaneous Operations on Parallel or Near-Parallel Instrument Runways

Is there a one sentence answer that describes the recommended separation distance of parallel runways without shelling out $47?

msjh,
SFO's main arrival runways 28 are 750 feet apart, and that goes bad frequently, so the magic number is more than that.

Landing on the wrong runway
 

Thank you.

I guess another question then is just how often planes have landed on the wrong runway at Gatwick, as a purely pragmatic measure.

The FAA typically requires 4300 feet runway separation for independent IFR operations. On a case by case analysis only 3000 feet might be permitted.

You might want to widen your question to ask about landings on the parallel taxiway at Gatwick.

That's in line with the runway separation distances in ICAO Annex 14, PANS-OPS and PANS-ATM:

1035 m for independent parallel approaches (subject to suitable SSR requirements, otherwise 1310 m)

915 m for dependent parallel approaches

760 m for dependent parallel departures

760 m for segregated parallel operations (less if runways are staggered)

Measuring with googlemaps returns a result of 200m (+/- not very much).

It's actually 205 m, according to the airport's own website: Flughafen Berlin Tegel

But still nowhere near the minimum required for parallel IFR operations.