Originally Posted by
heckenhocker
don't know who your clients are, but landing in HEL last week to see a veritable army of snow ploughs ready, and then carrying out another runway sweep as soon as we cleared was pretty impressive
I have worked with most of the big airports up at the 60 North end of Europe. Strange how we think that weather cancellations are the trigger for no compensation when there is so much more that we could do in this country, but cannot be bothered to invest in.
I know that LGW is the busiest single runway in the world for IFR operations. However, with winter demand relatively low at the moment, then we should be in delay time and not cancellation time.
The visibility minima for LGW is 75 metres, depending on the airline, crew, aircraft limitations. However, if the runway friction/crosswind is out of limits for autoland, then you are stuffed. It then reverts back to 350 or 550 metres, depending. Also, if the snow is thick, then the lights do not show up through the snow. You get a classic problem with the snow ploughs that throw the snow over one set of edge lights and not the other. You can then get pilots landing well to the side of a ruwnay. Not so much of a problem in this country because of the touchdown zone lighting (those big set of lights in the runway near the start).
One problem with snow ploughs is that if you have metal blades too close to the runway, then they have a habit of pulling up all the inset lights.
The other operating limit that LGW have probably screwed up with the de/anti-icing of the runway is that of the spare runway too. It should have been possible to use that for departures whilst they sorted out the main runway.
I have worked at a few airports that had a jet engine on the back of a truck pointing about 45 degrees downwards as a source of heat to melt the snow/ice. If you consider the fuel burn of that engine, it is tiny in comparison with the fuel burn of the diverting aircraft.