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When will this be happening?
The consultation documents give little detail about the current hold stack usage, in section E NATS seeks to reassure us about the usage of hold stacks “Whilst the holds can accommodate up to eight aircraft at 1000ft levels from 7000ft up to 14000ft, it should be noted that the hold will only have aircraft at all eight levels when the number of arrivals is particularly high; this will not happen regularly. Equally, aircraft will often not have to hold at all. So in the worst case scenario for Luton, 25 planes an hour could be circling over your rural community with an expectation that by 2014 at night you could have 2 planes an hour overhead. It is widely known that both Luton and Stansted are looking to attract more international flights particularly from the USA . Flights arriving from the USA will often arrive in UK airspace before the airport is open due to a strong tail wind and will need to stack in the early morning. If the plan gets the go ahead then in Spring 2009 the changes will be implemented. |
The tables for Average Hourly Usage for the proposed Luton arrivals indicate that the capacity for planes to land without holding would need to be on average 13 per hour and at peak 25 per hour by 2014. Luton’s landing capacity is 32 planes per hour when working at full capacity. Any reduction to this capacity would mean aircraft holding in a stack.