Flight paths to be redrawn
 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ir-congestion/


I hope I'm not airborne the day that gets implemented.

Good luck with that! The first thing it will do is bring out the anti-aviation mob in force.

On the face of it, this is the same sort of nonsense as the “tunnels in the sky” fiasco some years back. From what I read about this idea, it is designed to reduce delays & extended routing. But, the problem that causes these to happen is the excessive number of a/c which wish to operate into certain “congested airports” . That is, there are too many a/c wishing to operate into these airports because the runway capacity is less than the demand. You can fly extended routes on the approach or you can hold the excess in stacks, but unless you have the runway capacity you can never reduce the delays or avoid extended routings. The only other possible method of avoiding this would be to have strict control of departure times, en route times , & to ensure that every a/c flew the optimum track, without exception so that they all arrived at specified times with the appropriate distances between them at destination. Of course, this would require strict application of departure slots - resulting in delays ; & this would be impossible to implement on a workable basis because you could not allow for the actual traffic pattern at the departure airport which would be required in order for you to apply the timed departures which would be required.

Many years ago, in a previous life, I was invloved in a multi-disciplinary investigation for expanding the capacity of the London airports. As with most things, it is never one factor alone which limits the overall capaciry. Yes - the runway is usually the limiting factor, but so also are the ways they are used, and the many other bottlenecks too - the terminals, the stands, the taxiways and the surrounding airspace management - the routes, the sectorisation, and the technologies used in the air and on the ground. Thus, a redefinition of the routes and airspace will help to advance the overall capacity - even though it will produce a backlash over noise.

Presumably by "demand" you mean the actual number of aircraft using the runways. By definition, that can't exceed capacity.

In an ideal world, there would be a bit of headroom between the number of slots allocated and theoretical capacity of the runways (and the other airport/airspace infrastructure). In practice, planning to utilise 99% of that capacity during large parts of the operating day is inevitably going to result in delays, airborne holding and other inefficiencies, even on a good day.

Of course you can't blame airports that operate in the private sector for wanting to maximise shareholder value, revenue and profit by sweating their assets to the maximum. But anyone who thinks that adding more capacity while still planning to operate at an unrealistically high utilisation % is going to solve the problem, is living in a dream world.

A bit like what ACDM is trying to do then?

Yes, I agree with all of what you say. I have simply included it all in "runway capacity". And that is the simple problem - not slots, new flightpaths, stacks or vectoring all over the sky.

The study I referred to in my previous post was undertaken jointly in the early 1990s by BAA, NATS and IATA. It was mainly aimed at Heathrow, but also took into account the effects on Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City. By a combination of using both LHR runways in mixed mode, together with modifications to the taxiways on the ground to reduce runway occupancy times, and in the air, new SIDs with modified minimum noise routes to spread the departing traffic, we are able to show a very substantial increase in airport capacity (I forget the actual figures).

Three impediments prevented any substantial changes from being realised. (1) To use both runways simultaneously in mixed mode required planning consent. (2) Equally, any change to minimum noise routes also required planning consent:- https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/defa...ise-report.pdf (3) British Airways, when it found that a significant proportion of any increase in the slots made available would have to go to its competitors, threw could water on the results.

Extra parking stands would have also been needed, and BAA had plans to show how this could be done. All our new SIDs were proved to be practical by flying them out in aircraft simulators. And the improved runway occupancy times and throughput were all validated by BAA simulation models.

It was all interesting work which got no where. Nevertheless, many of the proposals we trialled are now in use many years later.

It's not just maximising shareholder value, although this may well appeal to airport operators. But at key hubs like Heathrow it is in the prime carrier's interest (BA here) to have the place saturated, especially where they are allowed Grandfather Rights, as this prevents competitors coming in and assists yield. We have all seen comments that if the 3rd runway is built there, the likes of Easyjet would be applying for slots and routes, inevitably to places already served by BA. Indeed, if the 3rd runway were miraculously to be available tomorrow, BA (and American etc) would be falling over themselves with leased aircraft to fill it all up pronto to stop anyone else getting in.

I'm sure the Torygraph is appealing to its core constituency of reactionary shire-dwellers to alarm them that they might actually hear the aircraft they love to fly in, on their business and holiday trips.

This will undoubtedly create an enormous fuss as everyone tries to make everyone else have aircraft fly over them while they themselves continue to use aviation for business and pleasure. They want all the gain, none of the pain. One has to bear in mind that the Prime Minister's constituency is full of well-off people who like the convenient global airport nearby (Heathrow) but don't want the aircraft to fly near them, instead to fly over some other (probably poorer) people. Now that the Boris Island airport idea is (mostly) dead, the next-best thing for his constituents is to direct the flights to the existing airports over someone else's head.

A cynic might also ask what unrelated things the government would like to bury under the noise screen, and who will be left in the worse position when the music stops and the chaos settles.

It would also require the Government to ditch its historical commitment to segregated operations (one runway for arrivals, the other for departures) which currently provides more or less predictable respite for half the day for communities under the arrival flightpaths on westerly operations.

I was involved with another study in Europe involving airports, airlines and air traffic providers. One of the issues I remember was delays caused by choke points at particularly busy airway intersections/sectors, SPY near Amsterdam and TRA near Zurich being good examples. If the flow rates were predicted to be exceeded, this resulted in restrictions being issued with Eurocontrol delaying departures. If you could route the traffic avoiding such points there would seem to be plenty of potential for improvement.

DavidReidUK,

That is what I mean by planning consent. Whether it is normal planning consent or an Act of Parliament, I don't remember.

If you think about it 60 years since the last change effectively means since the Patch Report in 1961. Super Constellations were still operating and the military had Meteors, Vampires and Hawker Hunters and of course the V-force. ATC was provided by Joint Air Traffic Control Radar Units. Secondary radar was in its infancy and there was no ATC automation. There were more military aircraft and less civil aircraft than today. While there have been many incremental airspace structure changes, it would seem that a 'ground up' redesign would be a good exercise although implementing the changes could be difficult (as stated above). The main impetus for the redesign should be efficiency, Some exercises in continuous en-route climb and descents already carried out by NATS show significant fuel savings (and emissions reductions if that worries you). The EUROCONTROL FABs are slowly becoming Free Route Airspace at high level, so the lower airspace should be redesigned with that in mind. There are other ways of maintaining runway acceptance rates that could be more efficient than stacks at LHR.

So I think it is a worthwhile exercise but the goal should be safety and flight efficiency and not maintaining majority slot holder positions ;-)

I really don't understand the "redrawn for the first time for 60 years" comment. London City only opened in 1987 and I can recall two total revisions since then (the last of which sends inbounds from Ireland within sight of Northern France before coming back in, never used to happen). Elsewhere the same.

The change to SIDs and STARS or adding a new approach pattern for a developing airport is minor., If you look at the overall design of the UK airspace route structures it has not altered significantly since 1965. The UK government has issued Airspace Modernization and it is clear this is a fundamental redrawing of the airspace to allow continuous climb, cruise descents, direct flight out over Ireland as it is the same Functional Airspace Block (FAB). It may also be that free routing is allowed at high level so aircraft can come off the free route SHANWICK and continue across UK to the FABEC. Savings could be significant for some operators.
This could be a big deal - I would suggest that air carriers take note and make certain that their views are taken into account - it might be another 60 years till there is another opportunity.

3, 4 or more runways, yes. Heathrow may or may not get a third runway – decision not yet made – but no-one's even started talking about the next stage: lengthening of the new third runway and/or adding a fourth. Those will surely be demanded in due course by the airport operator, BAA. How else, BAA will say, could Heathrow be a viable 'hub' to compete with Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol?

Different directional orientations? Many major airports seem to get away with runways in one orientation only. Heathrow once had crosswind runways forming a nice hexagon, but they're now taxiways.

Not obvious to authority, as virtually every UK airport with different direction runways has had its cross runways closed over the years - Heathrow, Prestwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham etc. I can only think of Belfast Aldergrove as remaining.

From 2013:

Super Heathrow: airport unveils 4-runway plan which would let it handle one million flights per year

What would the likely impact be on GA, gliders etc?