This will never work beyond gate holds and ground delays which airlines already control those times. Once an aircraft is the air with congested airspace it is very hard to change their position in a sequence with out lots of control instructions, all of which reduce the safety envelope. One or two attempts that end with with a deal or close to a deal and controllers will stop even attempting it as an unsafe and inefficient practice.

Perhaps your considerations are rubbish... I already reported that some studies are in progress at Eurocontrol and within some SESAR workpackages, and they are reworking the queue models, introducing the AMAN, TTA and similar concepts.
Reading your comments I suppose you are an experienced ATCO, but also in this case I would suggest you a visit in Brussels (EC or SESAR HQs), and my colleagues will be happy to show you what will be the ATC of the future.

You sure? NATS plans to start sequencing for London airspace 500 NM away so a very easy job to put aircraft in the order you wish one hour before landing. You don't need to work on the stack over Biggin Hill!
Dont forget airlines are stakeholders in many ANSPs (IAG in NATS for example) and ATC is becoming more business oriented (and, I hate to say, less safety oriented...) so we have to comply with airline needs.
Obviously the priorityzation project is a little bit more complicated than the DM article, but in the future airlines can have a word in the sequencing job.

Interesting theory, whilst NATS "The Business" might want to become more business oriented, and has done over the years, officially safety is still the number one priority. I can assure you that my ATCO friends in Area Control will go for safety every time (as will my colleagues in other operational areas) as it affects their licence and livelihood.

Richard Deakin has many fine qualities but last time I looked, an ATCO rating wasn't one of them. Its hard enough dealing with the complexities of the London TMA in normal conditions but throw in weather or other factors and any ATCO being told to "make the Birdseed from New York priority to land" will probably be met with a stiff response.

Looks like Ryanair are effed ... :P

All I'll admit is that I dabble in Aviation Safety and Safety Risk Management. AMAN, for far as I can tell, is a tool they're using to manage runway utilization. So I don't see how that applies to queuing up planes based on financial value. NATS will find themselves in hot-water the first time they opt to land one plane over another using this model. I can see the delayed airlines filing suits against NATS to recoup the cost of the additional fuel burn. It doesn't sound like a concept that balance financial health and safety. Maybe there's one of those brainy economists out there who can build a model to prove this out. I await such data to prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

This has me laughing because that's what I was thinking. Just from an operational point of view, how do you implement queue jumping and maintain safety? How do you pull them out of the stack and into their new place when you have traffic in the above, below, and adjacent airspace?

So Ryanair probably isn't seeing too much traffic into LHR. So this isn't a real problem, but it make the point because if they did, they would have to factor in delays to every arrival. Since NATS would likely be footing the bill for development, how much money do they save with this? Wearing my Capital Investment Program analyst cap, I don't see where this returns any value. There's definitely no value to be attributed to safety benefit. There's no way I could sell this to our capital budget managers.

I think it is necessary a further, final, definitive, conclusive, ultimate explanation in order to avoid misunderstandings and to give, finally, the correct information to the FTers and to the aviation professionals who posted in this thread.

This is the link to the controversial DM article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-airports.html

And these are some considerations and comments regarding the most important paragraphs of the above mentioned article:

Planes carrying more first class passengers may soon be given landing priority over other flights in a move that would radically overhaul the current 'first come, first served' rule, it has been claimed.

Obviously this is rubbish, and the information given is misleading, but only regarding the “first class” or status priority.

As more advanced technology becomes available to air traffic controllers, airlines will be able to designate specific flights within their own fleets to jump the queues.

This is true and exactly what I reported in my previous posts. What I wrote, and also the info on the article, is based on projects or trials performed under the SESAR supervision in order to avoid delays and maintain an orderly flow of the air traffic. Where delays cannot be avoided (best example is LHR) the aim is to manage them enroute within a radius that in the case of London airspace is 500 NM and for the most part of European airports is within 200 NM implementing some new tecniques (like the advanced sequencing using the “time to lose” or “time to gain” concept over determined enroute gates). When and where these new concepts or new technologies will be implemented is not yet clear, but I can imagine not earlier than 5 years, so the adverb “soon” in the first paragraph is improper and quite optimistic.
The most important aspect of this is that airlines want to have a word in the sequencing process (luckyly not the last word).

This would be beneficial for flights carrying large numbers of business or first class passengers, or planes with customers connecting to other flights.

I am not an airline manager or a dispatcher but I hope this statement will be applicable only for the connecting passengers. As an ATCO I will do my best to penalize a flight if I discover it has received priority only due to a large number of first class passengers.

Richard Deakin, the chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), said the introduction of remote technology, sensors and infrared cameras would increase the amount of data air controllers received from flights…

I can’t understand the relevance of this statement, being this applicable to a different project, in particular the Remote Towers currently being tested in Sweden.

Controversially, this would in turn allow controllers to prioritise flights at the request of the airlines.
He said: 'It might tell the controller how many passengers need to make a connecting flight.
'The controller can then make more informed decisions, perhaps giving it extra priority to make sure the passengers definitely make their connection.

True, this is what airlines ask, but this kind of priority is possible only for aircraft of the same airline or airline group (IAG?) and only within a strict time window. And, most important, at ATC discretion.

'And the commercial applications become obvious - tiered or premium services, giving priority to frequent flyers, loyal customers and high-value customers.'

Not sure an ATCO will apply or endorse this concept, even if many ATCOs, myself included, are elite members or fly business or first class. The only exception I can remember was the Concorde: usually it received a “silent priority” over other traffic, but it was due to its aerodynamical peculiarities and the difficult to manage big speed reductions on the approach.

Experts have suggested such changes would destroy what has been a basic premise of air traffic management since its inception - that of the first come, first served approach to landing at busy airports.

True, but these changes in the sequencing will be applied (in the not near future) to an aircraft out of ten at the best, only under determined circustances and within a single airline group of flights. So no need to be worried. Anyway, and I can imagine this is a shocking info for people where queing is an art, the first to come, first to serve concept sometimes is not the best system to apply in order to maintain the runway pressure, expecially at busy airports: for exampe when there is a gap in the sequence we use the “advantage of the position” concept and in this case the number 8 can became the number 2 in the sequence or when we have to manage a large amount of heavy and super aircraft we tend to group them together in order to reduce the spacing for the wake turbolence.

I hope this could clarify any doubt and I am sorry to disappoint some very experienced but not properly informed FTers, but in this case the DM article is not totally rubbish (apart the first class passengers): on the contrary the most part of the concepts reported are based on reliable sources and describe what will be the ATC system in the next 10 years..

Thanks ATC! Very helpful to have you on board!

I like it when somebody can prove out what I've posted is 95% rubbish. Very good post ATC.

Thanks. I apologize if in one of my previous posts, using the term rubbish, I gave the impression to be rude on my reply, it was not my intention.

With an average of 4 posts per year, I am not a big poster here but I am surely a big lurker, expecially on the BA forum, in my opinion the best on FT. And it is only thanks to the knowledge shared by many experienced FTers there that I am a BAEC Gold member and, even if I am not based in UK, about 60% of my flying activity is on BA.

In this case, being myself involved in the studies mentioned in my previous post, in particular in what we call "AMAN extended horizon" targeted on the needs of London airspace, I tryed to share the best of my knowlwdge.

I am the first to say that I don't like an airline could tell me what I have to do during my job and in what way I have to manage an approach sequencing, but "enhancements" (I use this word in the way and with the meaning the friends on the BA forum know ....) are possible also on the ATC side.