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Old March 18th 20, 09:34 AM posted to uk.transport.london
[email protected] boltar@nowhere.co.uk is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jun 2019
Posts: 317
Default LHR partial shutdown

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 09:23:19 -0000 (UTC)
Recliner wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 22:42:33 on Tue, 17 Mar
2020, Recliner remarked:
I've read on an aviation forum that Heathrow T4 is to be closed and just
used for aircraft parking during the Covid-19 crisis, and T3 may also close
temporarily. All BA's T3 flights will be moved to T5, and other aidlines'
flights will move to T2.


If there are fewer flights then it makes sense to concentrate them on a
smaller number of terminals. And at Gatwick close the North terminal if
there's sufficient capacity at the South terminal for all the aircraft
movements.


I think Gatwick currently intends to keep both terminals open, but to close
the satellite piers in each terminal. However, if things get worse, they
may indeed consolidate into just the South terminal, thus allowing the
Shuttle to be suspended.

I imagine that, even in the functioning terminals, many of the airside
shops will close while there are so few pax to sell to.

Of course, at the moment there are unpublicised repatriation flights going
on (eg, two Turkish 77Ws flew into Heathrow to repatriate Turkish citizens,
and BA has been flying cruise passengers home from Havana on three special
flights).


There must be a lot of repatriation flights because on flightradar24 there
seem to be just as many flights across europe and the atlantic as ever and
plenty of aircraft around heathrow and gatwick.

Apparently the rule about losing slots if not used has been suspended so they
can't simply be empty planes.