Heathrow diversion
Discussion
Due to capacity issues we have flights that should have landed at Heathrow landing as far away as Shannon Paris and even Helsinki. How practical would it be to put a few flights into Brize Norton in these situations? It's a big airfield, very quiet compared to civil airports, relatively close to West London and does have a passenger terminal of sorts.
abzmike said:
Facilities, border force, baggage handling etc for handling hundreds of passengers, crew and kit for handling big commercial aircraft - at a couple of hours notice? Nah...
Correct! I was at RAF Waddington as AWACS groundcrew during 9/11 and we got told to prepare to accept about 10 civilian airliners and all those points above were what eventually stopped it. Luckily there must have been "spare" capacity found elsewhere but generally speaking RAF airfields are set-up to fly only what is based there, with just a tiny "Visiting Aircraft Section" to handle a few visiting aircraft and certainly not for large events like this.
IIRC our recommendation was something like - use the aircraft internal emergency slides to get people off, then use RAF Police to corral & hold people until Border Force (or whatever it was called then) could arrive whilst luggage was to be unloaded by hand then put on the floor by the aircraft for the pax to pick-up themselves.
IanH755 said:
Correct!
I was at RAF Waddington as AWACS groundcrew during 9/11 and we got told to prepare to accept about 10 civilian airliners and all those points above were what eventually stopped it. Luckily there must have been "spare" capacity found elsewhere but generally speaking RAF airfields are set-up to fly only what is based there, with just a tiny "Visiting Aircraft Section" to handle a few visiting aircraft and certainly not for large events like this.
IIRC our recommendation was something like - use the aircraft internal emergency slides to get people off, then use RAF Police to corral & hold people until Border Force (or whatever it was called then) could arrive whilst luggage was to be unloaded by hand then put on the floor by the aircraft for the pax to pick-up themselves.
That doesn't sound too dissimilar to flying from Exeter airport really! I was at RAF Waddington as AWACS groundcrew during 9/11 and we got told to prepare to accept about 10 civilian airliners and all those points above were what eventually stopped it. Luckily there must have been "spare" capacity found elsewhere but generally speaking RAF airfields are set-up to fly only what is based there, with just a tiny "Visiting Aircraft Section" to handle a few visiting aircraft and certainly not for large events like this.
IIRC our recommendation was something like - use the aircraft internal emergency slides to get people off, then use RAF Police to corral & hold people until Border Force (or whatever it was called then) could arrive whilst luggage was to be unloaded by hand then put on the floor by the aircraft for the pax to pick-up themselves.
The last time I flew into Gatwick on Easyjet, we were told there was something wrong with the plane's parking sensors, so the pilot couldn't park accurately enough to dock with the corridor thing. I thought they might send us out of the plane down the slide, but disappointingly someone found a staircase on wheels.
UK news quote re Heathrow shutdown:
"At least 220,000 passengers have been left stranded in Britain and around the world after an electrical fire shut the airport for at least 24 hours – with the level of global travel chaos sparked by the outage being compared to 9/11.
The UK’s busiest airport was forced to close on Friday after its main power substation exploded and set alight less than two miles away in the west London suburb of Hayes.
The complete closure of Heathrow due to the loss of just one electrical substation is unprecedented and raises major questions for the airport and the Government. It has also left many stranded travellers raging and reduced to tears.
Mr Tice said on GB News: “It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it… Net Zero compliant.”
“They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their Net Zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking"
Oddly no mention of that by the Net Zero Fuhrer Milliput: https://news.sky.com/story/heathrow-closure-backup...
'Earlier, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News that while the cause "is not clear" a back-up generator that could have kept Heathrow open was affected by the fire.
Asked what this says about the safety of our critical infrastructure, Mr Miliband said he didn't want to "jump to conclusions" but added: "I understand it from the national grid there was a back-up generator, but that was also affected by the fire, which gives a sense of how unusual and unprecedented it was.
"There is a second back-up which they are seeking to use to restore power, so there are back-up mechanisms in place, but given the scale of this fire the back-up mechanisms also seem to have been affected."
"At least 220,000 passengers have been left stranded in Britain and around the world after an electrical fire shut the airport for at least 24 hours – with the level of global travel chaos sparked by the outage being compared to 9/11.
The UK’s busiest airport was forced to close on Friday after its main power substation exploded and set alight less than two miles away in the west London suburb of Hayes.
The complete closure of Heathrow due to the loss of just one electrical substation is unprecedented and raises major questions for the airport and the Government. It has also left many stranded travellers raging and reduced to tears.
Mr Tice said on GB News: “It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it… Net Zero compliant.”
“They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their Net Zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking"
Oddly no mention of that by the Net Zero Fuhrer Milliput: https://news.sky.com/story/heathrow-closure-backup...
'Earlier, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News that while the cause "is not clear" a back-up generator that could have kept Heathrow open was affected by the fire.
Asked what this says about the safety of our critical infrastructure, Mr Miliband said he didn't want to "jump to conclusions" but added: "I understand it from the national grid there was a back-up generator, but that was also affected by the fire, which gives a sense of how unusual and unprecedented it was.
"There is a second back-up which they are seeking to use to restore power, so there are back-up mechanisms in place, but given the scale of this fire the back-up mechanisms also seem to have been affected."
Austin Prefect said:
I think Mil,liband was talking about the national grid's back up and completely ignoring the issue of Heathrow's backup for when the grid wasn't available.
There were certainly two versions - one that the fire had taken out the back-up system, and the other that the back-up worked but could only power critical stuff like ATC.Hey ho, another 5 year public enquiry at the taxpayers' expense. No wonder we're going backwards not forwards.
Simpo Two said:
Austin Prefect said:
I think Mil,liband was talking about the national grid's back up and completely ignoring the issue of Heathrow's backup for when the grid wasn't available.
There were certainly two versions - one that the fire had taken out the back-up system, and the other that the back-up worked but could only power critical stuff like ATC.Hey ho, another 5 year public enquiry at the taxpayers' expense. No wonder we're going backwards not forwards.
MarkwG said:
The only way to fully mitigate that risk would be a generation system outside the national grid, dedicated to the airport, which would mean a huge investment in installing, running & securing it, & using land on site just for that purpose; that isn't a practical solution, hence the airport will always rely on the grid.
And that would mean all major airports are equally vulnerable (unless they have a generation system outside the national grid), so Heathrow was just unlucky.Austin Prefect said:
Due to capacity issues we have flights that should have landed at Heathrow landing as far away as Shannon Paris and even Helsinki. How practical would it be to put a few flights into Brize Norton in these situations? It's a big airfield, very quiet compared to civil airports, relatively close to West London and does have a passenger terminal of sorts.
Even international RAF flights operating into Brize need to prebook (Ops do it) Customs and Immigration officers to meet aircraft. There are no permanent staff there and they couldn't magically be deployed at short notice. Then as someone said the rest of the facilities are really very small compared to even a small regional airport in the UK.Most civvy aircraft wouldn't even carry airfield approach plates into a military base like Brize unless it was something preplanned like training. Without those you can't use an airfield as a diversion.
Many more reasons that make it unlikely or impossible.
Granadier said:
The last time I flew into Gatwick on Easyjet, we were told there was something wrong with the plane's parking sensors, so the pilot couldn't park accurately enough to dock with the corridor thing. I thought they might send us out of the plane down the slide, but disappointingly someone found a staircase on wheels.
Planes don't have parking sensors. They're either guided onto stand by a marshaller or by a set of light fitted to the stand.It's likely the jetbridge, which is manoeuvred by the ground staff onto the aircraft was broken. If the guidance was broken then you don't taxy onto stand without a marshaller.
Simpo Two said:
MarkwG said:
The only way to fully mitigate that risk would be a generation system outside the national grid, dedicated to the airport, which would mean a huge investment in installing, running & securing it, & using land on site just for that purpose; that isn't a practical solution, hence the airport will always rely on the grid.
And that would mean all major airports are equally vulnerable (unless they have a generation system outside the national grid), so Heathrow was just unlucky.Edited by MarkwG on Saturday 22 March 21:34
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