![]() There’s also new Demand Capacity Balancing software in the works, created with help from Harris, Met Office, Clarinet and Google Cloud. For the airport, the difference between a DBS, TBS and eTBS system for landings is only a flight or two per hour, but it also offers more reliable landing times in strong headwinds. The difference between the old categories and the new refined model would slash the time gap between a Boeing 777 following an Airbus 380 by a quarter, the NATS document notes. An upgrade this spring, called enhanced time based separation (eTBS), recategorised planes into new weight classes for more precise vortex separation. During strong headwinds, that gap can be shrunk down, helping to boost how many "movements" an airport can squeeze in, a NATS document notes. In 2015, NATS rolled out an "intelligent approach" system using time-based separation (TBS) at Heathrow, which instead sets a safe time to cover the gap between planes. Aircraft create a vortex in their wake, so need to give each other space that’s previously been a set distance, a system known as distance-based separation (DBS). The planes are kept apart via a recent aviation innovation: time-based separation. ![]() So the challenge that we as a community have is to deploy every single innovative idea to ensure that we operate as close to schedule, every minute of every day.” “This then causes a knock on effect throughout the day, potentially impacting on hundreds of flights. “If there is any deviation from the airport operating schedule, such as weather in the London airspace or regulation in nearby airspace, we have very little headroom in which to recover,” he explains. Dale Reeson, the general manager of air traffic services at Heathrow for control tower operator firm NATS, explains that such work is not so much about getting more flights in and out, but ensuring resilience. Heathrow doesn’t make all its decisions based on capacity: noise issues mean it uses alternating runways (one for arrivals, one departures) rather than mixed-mode (both arrivals and departures on each runway, like Gatwick) despite the latter being more efficient. ![]() There, planes spiral in circles until given the go-ahead by air traffic controllers to land, where they join a queue 29 miles long to the runway, ensuring there’s a perfect flow of planes onto the tarmac for Heathrow, it’s better to keep planes circling overhead than it is to miss a landing opportunity. “As other airports worldwide become more capacity constrained, they will have a lot of lessons to learn from Heathrow.” High-flying managementīecause so many planes come into Heathrow, the planes are kept in sky-high waiting rooms called “holding stacks”, which are scattered in the airspace around the south-east of England. “Heathrow has tried almost every short-term trick in the book to try and boost capacity within current regulatory restrictions on night flights, the maximum number of movements per year and air space restrictions,” Warnock-Smith says. Regardless of your opinion on the new runway – there are sound and environmental complaints, countered by claimed economic considerations – there’s no question that the limitations have forced Heathrow into a magical display of aviation efficiency, using technology to push the limits of what’s possible. “This artificially inflates the price airlines have to pay to gain access to Heathrow, with the costs of gaining access often being passed on to the end user: the passenger or shipper,” Warnock-Smith adds. Plus, high capacity is seen as a signal of high demand, which can push up prices. “Stories of passengers being stranded inside aircraft for up to five hours after landing during this winter’s snow was unacceptable,” says Warnock-Smith. While 99 per cent efficiency sounds good, it leaves no room for anything to go wrong. ![]() So, whilst other airports compare in terms of volume in terms of operating efficiency the UK airports are amongst the best performing. “All of which shows that Heathrow and indeed Gatwick are very efficient airport operations - remember Gatwick only has one runway that it uses for both arrivals and departures,” says John Grant, executive vice president at aviation analysis firm OAG. Gatwick is similarly successful: with a single runway, it managed 46m passengers last year, pipped by Mumbai as the world’s busiest single-runway airport at the end of last year. ![]()
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