Landing priority to flights with more first/business pax

"Planes carrying more business or first class passengers could be given priority to land in the future."

http://travel.aol.co.uk/2015/01/18/airl ... ol_3239070

The story originates in the Sunday Times (paywall), and was also picked up in the Daily Mail. There's quite a bit of reductive/sensational editorializing going on, but it seems only within each airline might flights be prioritized.

I see some airlines using this to try and speed up delayed flights if they were at risk of crossing over the EU261 delay thresholds or there was a risk of a lot of people misconnecting to other flights because their flight was delayed rather than just because there are a lot of status passengers on board

Seems like a load of nonsense to me (certainly with regards to arrivals, may be possible a little with departures) Sequencing is not decided by the airlines concerned it's sorted by ATC (at a considerable distance from landing), the order would not be changed because of a request by an airline even if they were happy to swop a place in the "queue".

The only way you are jumping up the order is if you are declaring an emergency of some sorts!

This really strikes me as a journalist hearing one thing and writing something else entirely!

You might be right Trevski.

This is the quote from the Sunday Times from the bit of the article accessible without paying:

Richard Deakin, chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats), said plans to transform the way controllers manage the skies could allow them to prioritise specific flights at the request of airlines, including “premium services” with “high-value customers” on board.

Note the extremely selective direct quoting!

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/new ... 2015_01_17

I don't think this really holds water as the aircraft have to allocated slots according to size and therefore as most business class jets a heevy jets it would throw the who,oe system out where then tend to allocate in blocks

The idea of this was to manage demand at the terminals, so if T3 is quiet and T5 is busy, T3 arrivals will be prioritised.

Why not methinks, despite the operational complexities? After all, airlines, airports and air traffic control are all private, why shouldn't they work out what makes the most money for them.

Not going to happen though, in reality, other that perhaps a bit of selective de-holding on arrival into Heathrow.

Not going to happen though, in reality, other that perhaps a bit of selective de-holding on arrival into Heathrow.

Yes something like that

There is a queue to land at LHR and if BA or VS or whoever have several flights in the queue then why not allow them to prioritise their flights within their existing order so as I said already if one flight is running late and at risk of EU261 applying why not let it jump the VS places in the queue with another VS flight moving back to replace it.

Obviously this would need to be done in good time and not on final approach.

Not going to happen though, in reality, other that perhaps a bit of selective de-holding on arrival into Heathrow.

Yes something like that

There is a queue to land at LHR and if BA or VS or whoever have several flights in the queue then why not allow them to prioritise their flights within their existing order so as I said already if one flight is running late and at risk of EU261 applying why not let it jump the VS places in the queue with another VS flight moving back to replace it.

Obviously this would need to be done in good time and not on final approach.

It's just not going to happen, if you've 3 planes in the hold at biggin for instance FL70 FL100 and FL130 there's no way that the plane at FL70 is going to be allowed to stay in the hold at FL70 while they expedite one or both of the higher aircraft in, Terminal Control simply don't have the capacity within the airspace or the computer systems to do It.

Such a thing would have to be done way ahead of time, aircraft are captured and the sequence set by the Arrival manager system many hundreds of miles and usually Over an hour prior to arrival at the stack.

It may be possible to do it when traffic is very light but at that time the benefit to the airlines is negligible.

Edit: just re read my post and it came across rather combative, that wasn't my intention.

Also as BA is the biggest stakeholder with a very high percentage of connecting passengers they would not be happy letting competitors jump the queue which could cause massive knock on problems. likewise I couldn't see VS passengers being happy with being say 1 hour late to let BA land a few jets earlier. I just can't see this working. I know there are other airlines using LHR I just used the two British ones to illustrate the competitive rivalry. I am sure the same exists between say Delta, United and AA

Paul what the article says (this one or one of the variants) is that there would be no pushing in so a BA plane couldn't go in front of an another airlines but that BA could replace a BA flight with another BA one that was ahead in the queue.

But still something that would need organising some time ahead.

Here's another variant on the same article: http://rt.com/uk/223911-priority-landing-uk-airports/