RECENT NEW ACTIVITY @ LHR
 

Thought it might be useful to summarise the new/different/interesting non home based airline activity at LHR which has/is going on at present since the Covid crisis got going here.
Some of these are one offs and others seem to be more regular.

DHL - A330F regular increased capacity in addition to usual A306F
CHINA SOUTHERN - A380 weekly (Weds?) was in last night
TAM - today A350 PR-XTM is in on what appears a special charter or cargo flight from GRU, surely a first time for LHR LATAM A350? Not sure what time departs
LOGANAIR - ATR/SF340 IOM route moved over from LCY presumed to be temporary
ISRAIR - A319/A320 is this covering for the Elal schedule evening TLV-LHR-TLV?
UNITED 787-10, seems to be in daily on EWR-LHR-EWR is this permanent schedule or consolidation of the former B763/B772 flights?
CATHAY A350-1000 now seems more regular on a daily HKG-LHR-HKG

Anyone noted any others?

Cyprus Airways A320

BA IOM-LHR mini prop job

That's the above-mentioned Loganair ATR, I believe it's on lease to CityFlyer Express to operate the BA3255-3258 LHR/IOM.

There was an Alitalia A330 in a few days ago plus Airbridge cargo 744

About a week ago there were 2 A330's of Alitalia within an hour of each other doing the FCO-LHR route. There was one each day before that, or so it seemed. Perhaps mopping up lost souls of the UK sort to bring them home ?

RJ A310, Iberia A350 and Amerijet B767 today

Saw one of those, always nice to see an A300/310 - getting rare these days

Air Cairo A320 now..

quality over quantity now....

RJ had a freighter A310 in earlier this week. At the moment there are so many A300's of DHL, it's almost like the 80's again :-)

Just departed 09R back home

No shortage of A306 freighters in the U.S. at 0235Z this morning.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....8d87feac27.jpg

DHL I believe have added 3 weekly LHR-CVG flights on long haul network temporarily (as well as extra EMA-CVG) - usually operated by A330 but Amerijet 767 covered it yesterday.

A quick-and-dirty analysis of what's been into LHR during the past week, where the airline in question didn't use that type to LHR in the first week of March (or didn't operate to LHR at all) brings up the following:

ABW B744
AFL B77W
AJT B763
AWC A318
AZA A332
BCS A332
CCA A332
CES B77W
CFE AT45
CPA A35K
CSN A388
CSN B77W
CYP A319
ETD B77L
ETH B788
ETH B789
HFM A319
ICE B738
IRA A332
ISR A320
JAL B789
KZR A21N
MEA A332
MGX E195
MSC A320
MSR B789
PVG B763
QTR B77L
RJA A310
SAA A346
SIA A359
SVA B789
SWR A20N
TAP E195
UAE B77W
UAL B78X

A few of the above may be due simply to the Summer schedule change, but most are a result of ad-hoc, repatriation and other non-standard flights.

Seems like the A380-F would be better than scrapping them....the volume alone seems to be worth it...yes, you max out weight before volume, but there are many, many light weight/high volume loads out there...

Yes I forgot the AZ A330, that's been daily doing FCO-LHR-FCO for a while now.
Seems TAM A350 is leaving LHR 1700hrs tomorrow to position over to CDG then operate the usual CDG-GRU flight Friday evening

Amerijet doing a LHR-CVG now, amazingly rare. I notice CARGOJET are doing regular flights to EMA and BRU/FRA with a B763F as well. This seems to be daily occurrence also

EMA have had all sorts on DHL's CVG route in the last few weeks, hired in temporarily for this Covid19 period... Kalitta, Polar, Cargojet, Amerijet 767's and seem to have picked up a regular Kalitta 744F on a Sunday morning that drops in also. Believe there is two flights a day both ways. LHR added to the CVG network temporarily too, Amerijet covered it yesterday but it's generally been an A330.

Evelop A330

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?