I was not that long ago on a Ryanair flight departing from the small regional French airpoirt of Brest going to London Luton.
The flight was about 15 min late coming in and shortly after we all boarded (load factor was about 70%). The captain told us we missed our take-off slot due to air traffic control restrictions and couldn't take off for another 45min. It was a quiet sunny day with an aircraft landing or taking off every 20 min at BES.
My question: was the air traffic restriction local in the BES area or was it at Luton? How does it work in this case?
Air Traffic Control Restrictions question?
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EBAW_flyer
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Probably Luton, remember it is in the London airspace, one of the busiest in the world. Probably lost their slot for arrival in Luton so they had to wait for the next available slot.
Once had the same situation with a smaller plane. On a flight to Zürich from Antwerp (no traffic at all) we had to wait some 10 minutes for confirmation of our arrival slot in Zürich (and even then we still had to enter the holding at our destination).
Once had the same situation with a smaller plane. On a flight to Zürich from Antwerp (no traffic at all) we had to wait some 10 minutes for confirmation of our arrival slot in Zürich (and even then we still had to enter the holding at our destination).
It was almost certainly an enroute delay that affected your flight as opposed to an airport slot. Luton rarely has an arrival regulation and departure slots are almost non existant except in unusual circumstances such as weather or equipment failure.
The computer used calculates a take off time for each flight restricted by using its estimated time of arrival at the boundary of a restricted piece of airspace and back calculating.
As it is calculated on a first come first served basis those that miss a slot and have to delay go to the back of the queue and consequently have a bigger delay. If the delay is excessive there is normally a human intervention by those hard working boys and girls at the CFMU. Those guys are fantastic
El
The computer used calculates a take off time for each flight restricted by using its estimated time of arrival at the boundary of a restricted piece of airspace and back calculating.
As it is calculated on a first come first served basis those that miss a slot and have to delay go to the back of the queue and consequently have a bigger delay. If the delay is excessive there is normally a human intervention by those hard working boys and girls at the CFMU. Those guys are fantastic
El
Last tuesday, my WAW-AMS was a few minutes before scheduled departure time, when the pilot announced that ATC won't let them start the engines for another 10 minutes, due to expected traffic over the Polish-German border. This was something new, usually delays are caused by arrival slots at AMS.
Didn't stop us from arriving ahead of schedule at AMS though, but still. This whole air corridor sillyness should be scrapped soon.
Didn't stop us from arriving ahead of schedule at AMS though, but still. This whole air corridor sillyness should be scrapped soon.