A380 Landings Heathrow

[JATCC]

With the announcement of a trial currently underway whereby landings and departures at Heathrow may be interdispersed with the take-off and landings pattern in use ( eg if 27L is in use for landings there may be times when departures may also take place and vice-versa 27R may have the odd landing among the departures) an example was mentioned whereby A380 landings would be put on the take off runway thus eliminating the need to allow wake clearance for following aircraft. ( sorry that was a bit of a mouthful !)
The question is this.
Have any of you noticed A380 landings being routinely swapped to the departure runway ? eg the mid morning Emirates and the afternoon Singapore Airlines flights. Obviously this makes a difference if you want to set yourself up on the landing runway to photo these but then find they have landed on the other runway.

JATCC

[guest]

I haven't noticed it yet.
My understanding is that the "proactive tests" whereby they might deliberately set about doing this are scheduled in particular periods - the first of which starts on 28th November.

During the trial a number of proactive tests (still using the same operational measures as above) will be used to explore the passenger, environmental and operational impacts.

During the first phase of the trial, these tests will be used during two four week periods, the dates of which are 28th November 2011 - 25th December 2011 and 16th January 2012 - 12th February 2012

1) Landing Airbus A380 on the designated departures runway; The A380 is the biggest aircraft that operates at the airport. Due to the vortex it produces, aircraft behind it have to allow a greater distance when coming into land. The knock-on effect is that the arrival's programme can be delayed allowing for the A380 to come in before smaller aircraft can then make their approach to land. The airport is testing what difference it would make to the arrival schedule by allowing the aircraft to land on the departure runway.

http://www.heathrowairport.com/porta...0357e120a____/

Having said that, the daily reports of what is happening under the trial at

http://heathrowtrial.com/

have shown a few instances (one every other day ?) of things that they call

Number of aircraft arrivals operated outside the runway alternation pattern (excluding TEAM arrivals or emergencies)



I suppose those might (or might not be) things like A380 landing on the wrong runway.