An Airport Under Pressure
The National Air Traffic Control Services (NATS) in the United Kingdom announced recently that they now have a new system to squeeze more flights into London’s Heathrow Airport, which currently operates at 99{c26daad3ee576fc310c0943541c4a8cd06ab7fdf8e537310623e0cf50b343bc5} of capacity. For passengers this will mean less delays and cancellations when flying to the capital.
Flights Closer Together
The system is very simple: flights will be squeezed closer together and separated by time rather than distance in order to maintain a higher rate of arrivals. Currently flights are spaced apart at 8 km intervals. On particularly windy days aircraft fly slower relative to the ground so take longer to cover the 8 km distance. This results in a lower rate of arrivals at the airport. Using time based separation instead of distance means the arrival rate can be maintained on windy days with no erosion of safety margins.
Its Still Safe!
Just like on a motorway, good drivers maintain a two-second gap from the proceeding car. On a slower road the distance is of course less than the motorway but the same two-second margin of safety exists in case of an incident. It sounds shocking that in already crowded airspace aircraft will be even closer together but the system is the result of a four-year study by NATS to ensure a perfectly safe operation.
See For Yourself
As we already had all the tools setup to look into the skies of the worlds busiest airports we decided to take for ourselves to see just how busy the skies above London really are.
Take a look for yourself in our Highways in the Sky – Destination London video.
