London Landings
 

Wandering through central London this morning there was a constant stream of aircraft apparently heading for Heathrow, but there were also a lot of aircraft apparently heading for LCY, as if landing from the West. The wind seemed to be from the east if anything. Were LHR and LCY operating in different directions?

It sure happens. The LCY inbounds stay at least 1000 ft below the Heathrow ILS traffic..

Try eating your lunch in Trafalgar Sq and watching the BA ERJ-190s descending down Whitehall on base leg for LCY then turning final over St Martin in the Fields as a BA B744 thunders overhead going the other way joining the finals for Heathrow ! Never fails to impress, keep meaning to take the 300mm lense and try and capture both in shot, seen it but never been carrying the Nikon !

you think the view is good from the ground, you should try it from air. You get it alot on departure as well. 747, a380, a340 thundering overhead by 1000` as you turn at 1.5nm. Best office view in the world.

With the very short runway at LCY operations switch ends as soon as there is any tailwind component on the current active runway.

Because of noise requirements operations at LHR are primarily westerlies and only switch to easterlies when the tailwind component exceeds 5 knots. Therefore it is quite common for LCY and LHR to be operating in opposite directions.