Heathrow Airport Snow Plan
- Thread starter RogerS
- Start date
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As i commented on your previous post about this, i thought it only fair to mention that the guys at Oslo Airport Gardermoen reckons they would've had Heathrow snow free in about half an hour... 
But they have the best snow moving equipment available, and it's beeing used every year from october/november until march/april.
But they have the best snow moving equipment available, and it's beeing used every year from october/november until march/april.
pren
Established Member
RogerS":1ktyjvrb said:
The 2cm snowfall was used to illustrate the size of the task of clearing the aerodrome. It's not that they were anticipating 2cm coverage.
Task size
Snow varies in density with variations of temperature. Dry snow can have a weight of
300kg per cubic metre but wet snow/slush can approach 1 tonne per cubic metre and is
also much more difficult to sweep. Typically, Heathrow airport’s runway(s) covered to a
depth of 2cm of wet snow at 700kg/cu.m will require the removal of almost 5,300 tonnes of
snow. Much of this will need to be moved more than once as sweeping progresses. The
area of the airfield from which snow must be removed to facilitate aircraft operations is
1,688,460 sq/m of manoeuvring area (including the runway(s)) and 866,222 sq/m of
aircraft parking stands.
Also: The 'up to ten snow blowers' was only for runway and taxi way clearance. They form part of a much larger fleet.
DEPLOYMENT OF STAFF
Runway(s) & Taxiways
Control – MTO1 & MTO2
Vehicles; dependant on conditions and
activities required
Up to 10 Snow Sweepers (Sicards)
Up to 3 Airfield De-icers (Clearway 3)
Up to 4 Airfield Apron De-icers
(Clearway3/6
Aprons ( Cul-de-sac & Aircraft Parking Stands )
Control – Ramp Coordinators/Stand allocation
Vehicles; 20 Snow Tractors - Brush/Blade
A team in each Terminal, comprising of as many tractors as can be manned
(airport staff released from other duties).
A team in each Terminal, 4 Demountable (Small) Spreaders Clearway3/6
(Contractor and airport).
Passenger Walkways
Control; Apron Officer/Phoenix
Vehicles; 4 Mini Tractors – Brush/Clearway 6
Airside Roads
Control; Apron Duty Officer/Seagull/SNOCO
Vehicle; Gritter - Granite
Schmidt – Clearway 6
It would seem that BAA equipped Heathrow to deal with expected amounts of snow. These were unexpected amounts of snow. As far as I'm aware, no-one was killed and there were no aircraft lost during the snowfall at Heathrow. Yes, some people had their flights cancelled. I was one of them, due to fly to Stockholm on Xmas eve.
RogerS
Established Member
Bryn, looks as if we double-counted.
Looking at the list of available equipment in the BAA Snow Plan it does seem a bit lightweight. They have 9 Sicards that are towed behind Unimogs and these are reasonable bits of kit. But then they also list ten Sicard/Blowers which presumably are towed behind a Danline 2000. However, Googling Danline 2000 just comes up with a brush! The rest of the list are Tonka Toys.
Helsinki has 250 bits of kit from what I can discover. OK - they have more snow so let's look at a comparable airport.
One article claims that Frankfurt has 42 snowploughs but since the same article states that LHR has 28 I kind of take that one with a pinch of salt. A better article in a German aviation magazine quotes six snow blowers and 42 snow sweepers at Frankfurt. 12 large de-icing vehicles as opposed to LHR with 4 and one of those is a tiddler. Frankfurt invested in 16 million Euros for this stuff. Compared to 600,000 Euros for LHR. A three-shift operation at Frankfurt employs more than 300 employees. How many at Heathrow? Haven't managed to track that number down but I suspect that the dog was sick that day.
I know that Frankfurt had a short closure due to the snow but that was hours. Heathrow took three days to get sorted out.
Comparing the list in the Appendix of the plan with that listed elsewhere in the document reveals a lot of discrepancies which to my mind is consistent with BAA's cavalier attitude towards investment in snow clearing equipment. Other apocryphal tales would suggest that BAA have lost a lot of expertise by cost-cutting and getting rid of higher paid staff (ie those with the experience of sorting out these kind of problems)
Whichever way you cut it, BAA cut corners.
Looking at the list of available equipment in the BAA Snow Plan it does seem a bit lightweight. They have 9 Sicards that are towed behind Unimogs and these are reasonable bits of kit. But then they also list ten Sicard/Blowers which presumably are towed behind a Danline 2000. However, Googling Danline 2000 just comes up with a brush! The rest of the list are Tonka Toys.
Helsinki has 250 bits of kit from what I can discover. OK - they have more snow so let's look at a comparable airport.
One article claims that Frankfurt has 42 snowploughs but since the same article states that LHR has 28 I kind of take that one with a pinch of salt. A better article in a German aviation magazine quotes six snow blowers and 42 snow sweepers at Frankfurt. 12 large de-icing vehicles as opposed to LHR with 4 and one of those is a tiddler. Frankfurt invested in 16 million Euros for this stuff. Compared to 600,000 Euros for LHR. A three-shift operation at Frankfurt employs more than 300 employees. How many at Heathrow? Haven't managed to track that number down but I suspect that the dog was sick that day.
I know that Frankfurt had a short closure due to the snow but that was hours. Heathrow took three days to get sorted out.
Comparing the list in the Appendix of the plan with that listed elsewhere in the document reveals a lot of discrepancies which to my mind is consistent with BAA's cavalier attitude towards investment in snow clearing equipment. Other apocryphal tales would suggest that BAA have lost a lot of expertise by cost-cutting and getting rid of higher paid staff (ie those with the experience of sorting out these kind of problems)
Whichever way you cut it, BAA cut corners.
devonwoody
Established Member
Why dont they go for underfloor (underground ) heating. :mrgreen:
I heard on the news that out of 1300 flights in one day only 300 got away thats quite a few lost flights for "a couple of hours"
I'll expact one of your posts when they put up airport taxes/charges as well, can't have it both ways
J
RogerS
Established Member
jasonB":9n3b7tsp said:
Better than virtually no flights for three days!
jasonB":9n3b7tsp said:
More than happy to pay for a better service. Always have done. 67 million annual passengers. 25p a passenger gets a lot of snow blowers!
Alternatively they (Ferrovial) could pay less to share holders and invest.
