RwandAir A330 Heathrow-Kigali today - new one on me

this is normally a LGW operation via BRU but hasn't LGW virtually shut down? A lot of ops are converging on LHR for the cargo connections also.

today, a Spanish A330 pax flying LAX-LHR arriving this morning EC-MII - must be a repatriation flight also was a Miami Air B737-8 that flex MIA-YQX-EMA yesterday evening- very interesting could be a pax or mx flight to EMA? Very interesting as this one was new to Varig originally.

I was on another flight at the next gate to the Rwandair A330 a couple of months back, got all excited until it was pointed out that it was an LGW regular. As mentioned, due to LGW on very reduced ops, LHR is the choice.

It will be interesting if Loganair use the SF340 into LHR, must be the smallest type in operation into this airport for quite a while. Will be good to see props mixed up with the big jets.

Noticed over the last few days BA 777's operating under BA911* flight numbers, seems mostly to India and Pakistan. Not showing up on Heathrow website departures/arrivals, any ideas ?

Perhaps "rescue" flights to bring back stranded UK citizens?

Talking of flight numbers, whilst looking at various flights at various times these last weeks, I've noticed that there seems to be a reasonable proportion of them flying between point 'A' and 'B', but the flight tracker lists them as from/to other airports completely different to the route shown. These aren't 4-digit special flights btw.

Is it that flight numbers have been re-allocated and the system still has them in the previous iteration ?

Back on 09L departures today, it does seem a little busier too

Yes.

The flight trackers always struggle in April and November of every year, when the airlines switch between Summer and Winter schedules.

The reason is that, while the trackers pick up the ATC callsign for a flight, the route is derived by converting the callsign into the IATA flight number. That works fine for airlines that use wholly numeric callsigns (for example US carriers), but most major European carriers use alphanumeric callsigns which typically change every season for a given flight number. To make matters worse, the new alphanumeric callsign for a particular flight number may have been used in the past for a completely different flight, so the conversion that the flight trackers are using may be out-of-date.

For example, Lufthansa has used DLH1LA in the past for LH3383 (Heathrow-Dusseldorf) and then subsequently for LH2477 (Heathrow-Munich).

Thanks for the very detailed explanation Dave. I've also noted this with cargo flights as well, but thought that that might be down to the last minute changes required presently with cargo flights.

Yesterday was Heathrow's busiest day (using the term loosely) for the last couple of weeks, with 188 movements, albeit still only about 15% of the number on a "normal" Sunday.

Another Alitalia A330 doing FCO->LHR today!

I have noticed over the last weeks that the DHL aircraft seem to be at 3 times the altitude of similar departing passenger flights at the same relatively close to LHR point. Is this because they are much lighter, as in 'inbound full, outbound empty' ?

Ethiopian B.737-800 due next hour. ET-AQO just passing Paris.

That's an interesting flight. Perhaps it's empty (cargo only) to be able to make the flight without a fuel stop in-between ?

See there was a China Southern A380 B-6319 at Heathrow tonight - didn't realise they had them, was this a first visit?

There was a (different) CSN A388 on Wednesday of last week too, departed Thursday evening. I don't know whether it's an ad-hoc substitution for the B789 or a regular weekly thing.

Last week's flight arrived with only a handful of passengers and huge amounts of PPE which was not only in the hold, but on the seats and overhead bins. The boxes on the seats are held down with netting to stop it moving in case of turbulence. Some other flights are also doing this including a BA 777 from Singapore on Wednesday of this week.

Good stuff, thank chaps!

Finnair A319 just departed 09L and flew over London on the runway heading. I've seen a few of these departures recently - I wondered in what circumstances do they ignore the SIDs?