Heathrow real life procudures

[PLazarus 0]

Hi,Over the years of MSFS I have become pretty adept at flying the heavies... at the current time I am enjoying the usual high fidelity offerings from PMDG, LDS and others.I wonder if anyone knows of a good tutorial demonstrating the real life arrivals and departures for Heathrow? I would also like to know how it's done at other mega airports... LAX, JFK, DFW, LFPG, RJAA etc...I understand SIDS and STARS, holds etc.... I am looking for a real life type scenario... Monday 8am arrivals EGLL... typical holds ( what entry alt/exit alt? ) that sort of thing... This was inspired by a post in the screenshot forum discussing JFK arrivals some time ago ( Ed Detroit's post I think ).Any info appreciated..Paul

[Manny 1,293]

I would think, SIDs and STARs are real.Depending on the direction you are approaching and type of aircrafts and the runway that is being used, you would be given one of the STARs (if you conisder the directionm aircraft type, the runway being used), you may not find more than 1 STAR.... They would issue you that STAR as far as clearence, and then for the most part vectored... with some short cuts if the terminal area is not too crowded.MannyIn anycase, at the PMDG thread, there is a tutorial that was posted (not Heathrow). Its a trip from EDDF (Frankfurt) to KSFO (San francisoc). very detailed. It might be something that you are looking for.OK here you go. I found it.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search

[aerdt 0]

I'd think your best bet would be getting Radar Contact. Their procedures are usually as close to reality as it can get. You can either fly the full SID/STARs or can get vectored to final (among other procedures)Check out vatsim.net > Pilot Resource Center > Vatsim Chart Center for real life approach plates for Heathrow.In real life, especially at busy airports like Heathrow, you won't necessarily fly a full SID/STAR anyway, but it gives you a good idea of the real life procedures.Pat

[PLazarus 0]

Thanks guys,I have Radar Contact v4, and use it frequenty.. using fsbuild to recreate the sids/stars so they are in the plan....Manny, thanks mate, I read that tutorial... excellent work... love all the planning info.Pat, as you say... sids/stars may not be followed exactly... does anyone have a deeper insight into true life ops at these major airports? Not just Heathrow, but Miami, Kennedy, Narita, Haneda, LAX ( SOCAL approach must have lots of interesting aspects )etc etc any of the big ones.... or any of the smaller ones for that matter.What I am getting at is the deeper technicalities of a real life situation at these busy airports.At EGGL you always enter a hold. What is a typical normal hold entry altitude for Heathrow? Exit altitude? Do particular flights use particular stars? For example, I am led to believe that KJFK has special STARS for flights from Asia.Another factor that interests me is runway usage. For example Heathrow... assuming winds calm, I understand they use parrallel landings in peak hours ( 5am-7am )with the aircraft positioned well for separation, ie 1 lands 09L then 60 seconds later 1 lands 09R, thus maintaining separation as the runways are too close together for true parrallel approaches. Also they swap ends about midday for noise abaitment.This is all in my persuit of simulating real life aviation ops as close as I can!I frequently fly AA LIM MIA in real life and that flight arrives about 4.30am, so we fly straight in - really straight in... you can see South Beach miles out... no turns nothing.... so surely no STAR then... not much traffic around at that time.Thanks again,Paul

[aerdt 0]

Why don't you try flightaware.com? It usually shows also the SID/STARs for real airliner routes, although, of course, it doesn't go into detail about the exact approach/vectoring procedures. Of course, some SID/STARs are specifically tailored for one runway. Grab all the plates that you can find for a particular airport and study them. *shrug*I guess there is no recipe that is set in stone - otherwise you wouldn't need human ATC. From my understanding, it pretty much gets vectored as they see fit on a first-in, first-serve basis, so RC4 is probably as far as you can get with FS9.Pat

[G7USL 117]

Is there a 'Demo' of Radar Contact 4 available? I'm getting keen on buying it.Will it be updated for FSX?

[Ray Proudfoot 9,038]

Hi Dave,No demo version available I'm afraid but I'd be amazed if you bought it and then didn't like it. There's a link to a video on the RC Forum where RC4 is one of 4 products featured.It will be compatible with FSX once Pete Dowson updates FSUIPC as required.Cheers,

[Max Kraus 341]

My limited knowledge of EGLL is that there are four separate London Control zones, 2 north, 2 south. Depending on your route you will be given to one controller to hold you until you can enter the approach pattern. Generally, you're on Radar vectoring in London rather than the STARS. There's a great web page on this I saw once, with all diagrams of the zones and stuff.

[XWRed5 0]

Hi Paul,I don't know of any tutorials but I can describe a typical early morning arrival and departure from Heathrow. As with all major airports traffic density and weather conditions play a large part in what happens so this is a very broad description. However, I will base it on a typical spring Heathrow morning, pretty busy with OK (> Cat 1) weather.Initial contact with London they will confirm the STAR and maybe holding (e.g. LAM 3A for Heathrow, current delays 5 to 10 mins).When it's busy you will often get vectors early, moving you slightly left or right of track but still basically going in the same direction. You will see/hear other aircraft suffering the same fate and can judge who's who and estimate your position in the sequence. You will be given height constraints (in the LAM 3A example, 250 at/abeam Logan and 150 at/abeam Saber are usually requested). They may let you slow down as well, usually only when you're down in the FL teens you'll be informed "when level you *can* reduce to hold speed" i.e. you don't have to but if you value fuel at all then it's probably worth it.Holding will be at the four holds LAM, BIG, OCK and BNN, all as published in the books. As you approach the hold you will be passed over to the first Heathrow director. You'll be badgered for aircraft type and AITS information received.As you near the bottom of the hold (FL80) you will be passed to the intermediate Heathrow director. When it's time, he (or she, but I'll stick with he for brevity's sake but implying both) will give you a heading and speed off the hold. Almost always 220kts but the heading varies. If on easterlys the heading will make sense (i.e. you will be pointing west). If on westerlys, however, you will be given a variable sized S turn and as such the heading may well take you away from the airport. Using the LAM example, a heading of 270 is common for quite a few minutes (if you look at the charts you will see that this is not really in the direction you would expect).You will then get descended to FL70. At this point is where ATC earn their money. They've got 4 holds and they have to arrange us all in a nice line 2.5nm apart on the ILS. As such there are *really* no hard and fast rules on this one. You can expect to be given a 180 degree turn at some point, you will be told to contact director (120.4 if you care) and you will be told to slow down to 180.You will be given track miles to go (although it can change very quickly and they won't keep you updated unless you ask) and given descent to about 4000ft.The vectors will get you on the Localiser, call established and you'll be told to descend with the ILS. Shortly after you start down on the glideslope you will be told to slow to 160kts until 4 miles. Then you are passed to tower.Tower do the usual thing..... and you land. Taxi off (sharpish please, there's another guy 2.5 miles behind you) and over to ground who'll navigate you through the carnage that is early morning Heathrow.Now the departure is easier. You'll be given a SID in your clearance so you know what's expected of you. The SID charts have a London control frequency on them for you to preselect on departure. You will be passed over to them at about 2000 ish ft. They used to say "ident, no speed" but more recently they've been running a trial to reduce RT and just say "ident" now. When it's busy you can be given a heading, usually taking you only slightly off the SID. Sometimes it's "after passing 4000 ft turn right/left heading xxx". Either way, you'll find yourself at 6000ft.As you make your way out of the London TMA (where you will be joined by traffic from Gatwick, Luton, City, Biggin, Northolt and various others) you will (finally) be given clearance to climb, sometimes, it's bitty (climb FL80 - 90 - 110 - 130), sometimes you're lucky and you get straight up to 180 or somewhere like that. Assuming a departure to the east, you'll end up climbing through mid 200's when you get passed to Maastrict, who will invariably ask what level you want to cruise. Then it's paper out, breakfast in and munch away.I'm sorry this can't be more definitive but as I said, it all depends.I hope this has helped/answered your question.Take care,Ian

[mgh 89]

At Heathrow (as with all the UK airports I'm aware of) the individual SIDs are all associated with particular airways. For example, the Compton (CPT) SIDs have a note under Airway Route "Via CPT L9 westbound." Aircraft departing from Heathrow have to follow Noise Preferential Routes (NPR) that form the initial part of the SIDs. Compliance with the NPRs is required until a height of about 4000 ft is reached. After this, ATC may direct the aircraft off the SID depending on operational conditions. The use of SIDs is mandatory and the UK Manual of Air Traffic Services requires flight plans to be rejected if they don't use a published SID.Similarly, the starting points of STARS are associated with airways. For example, BIG 3A has T27 and UM733 shown at its starting point, GURLU. The STARS all end at waypoints with holds. These are Biggin (BIG) to the souh east, Bovingdon (BNN) to the north west, Lambourne (LAM) to the north east, and Ockham (OCK) to the south west. These serve all runways at Heathrow. At busy times, inbound aircraft are directed by ATC to one of these holds and are then normally radar vectored by ATC onto the appropriate approach. At quieter times ATC may pick up the aircraft earlier on the STAR and vector them more directly onto final approach.This is explained in document DAP_EIS_04_TCA.pdf can be downloaded from the UK CAA site. It also has an illustration showing the arrivals paths for a typical day.EDITMy understanding of runway use at Heathrow is that there is a "westerly preference". That is, aircraft will approach from the east and depart to the west whenever possible upto a 5kt tailwind. This was decided many years ago to avoid departing aircraft overflying the heavily built-up areas between central London and the airport. Runway alternation, which applies only when westerly prefeence is in force, involves one runway being used for landings with the the other being used for take offs from 6am to 3pm and the other being used for takeoffs from 3pm until the last departure. As far as I am aware the direction is not changed as long as westerly preference is in force. Because of the "Cranford Agreement" when aircraft are taking off to the east, runway 09L cannot normally be used.More recently, similar alternation has been introduced for arriving night flights.

[Manny 1,293]

Here you go.Real live ATC at Atlanta approach. with a Live Radar. Atlanta Center Northeast Arrival, Atlanta TRACON / Atlanta TowerI think there is a STAR plate there. It might be worth printing it out and monitoring the radar.I go here when there is storm weather around Atlanta.. its a lot of fun watching the crowded area then. :)http://www.atcmonitor.com/You can switch between the Center Radar and the TRACON Radar (Approach).Atlanta is a vey busy terminal.My understanding of the big picture is... that the STAR and basically any clearence that is given is primarily a fall back for lost comm. This way when you lose contact with ATC, they know exactly what you would do and when. So having established that basic default position, they vector you about as per the need at that point in time. In cases of bad weather and/or very crowded terminal areas.. you pretty much fly the STARs for the most part for they are simply too busy to short cut anything... unless for very urgent matter.If you look at the Radar here. they are all lined up as per the STAR.MannyThe charts for this MACEY arrival.http://atcmonitor.com/atlcharts.html

[Max Kraus 341]

That reply was brilliant. I learnt a LOT mate. I take it you're up there for real? Max.

[PLazarus 0]

Many thanks Guys...Really good info for me to get my teeth into.... Ian and others.. do you know how Gatwick, Luton, LCY and Stansted fit into this...? I assume they all have their own stars/sids - it's a pretty limited space for all this. Does London area control receive all flights and then pass then to the relevent approach?Manny... Thanks, I forgot about ATL... world busiest airport nowerdays.Off to try and put all this into practice with the sim...PaulCongrats to Germany on their win.

[mgh 89]

I found the following image for Heathrow showing arrival tracks in red and departure tracks in green for a period (a day?) of westerlies.The black lines show the NPR corridors. These are only effective to 4000 ft so that ATC vectors some departures away from the SIDs once they've reached that height.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/151869.jpg

[XWRed5 0]

>I take it you're up there for real? Yup Beats working for a living :-)