London Banter - View Single Post - Plan to pedestrianise London's Oxford Street scrapped

John Williamson · June 13th 18, 10:31 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On 13/06/2018 09:28, wrote:
On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 20:20:44 +0100
Graeme Wall wrote:
On 12/06/2018 09:50, wrote:
Flight paths are not fixed tracks in the sky, they can be adjusted to suit.

Actually they are.

They're not fixed infrastructure such as roads and rails, they can be changed
with little effort.

They are fixed to a large extent by the positioning of the runways. To
land safely, most airliners need a straight line approach exceeding 25
miles, entered from a turn of about 10 miles in radius,so for Heathrow,
they start their final approach over the Thames estuary area. For
Manston, that approach would skirt the French coast, so would need
international co-operation between air traffic controllers.

Where the 25 mile approach path is not available, pilots have a low
opinion of the safety of using the airport, and the old Hong Kong
airport (AKA Kai Tak, aka HEart attack airport) used to be regularly
voted the worst airport in the World by pilots, due to the twisty
approach between high rise buildings. The new one is rated as being much
safer, due to its unobstructed approach over water.

Air traffic control would also have a low opinion of aircraft taking off
from Manston into the densely occupied landing approach areas round
Heathrow and Gatwick. This would be even more fun when the wind changed
and all of them were taking off and landing while travelling East, so
that Heathrow and Gatwick traffic was taking off into Manston's approach
pattern.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.