Operational update - 4 Aug 2021

4 August 2021

The following provides an update on the number of flight movements we expect to see at Heathrow in August along with our plans for our runway operations.

Flight movements

Last month we outlined how we expected to see between 400-860 flight movements during July, depending on what action the government took to ease Covid restrictions on 19 July. The lowest daily number of flights in the month was 430 (6 July) and the highest was 624 (25 July), falling well below our upper forecast levels. Our forecast for August ranges between 510-800 flight movements a day, with ongoing daily variation as we have seen throughout the pandemic and a steady build through the month as various restrictions are lifted and airline and consumer confidence grows.

Runway operations

As mentioned in our previous updates, we returned to dual runway operations on 5 July, alternating at 15:00 as usual when we are on westerly operations to provide local communities with respite.

Since 2 August and until 14 August we are changing to single runway operations overnight from 20:00, landing on and taking off from the southern runway to accommodate essential surface repair works to our northern runway. These works coincide with our scheduled night-time runway alternation pattern which specifies the southern runway during this period. We will resume dual runway operations each morning at 06:00 in line with our normal published alternation pattern.

The works will not take place if there is a risk of low visibility the following morning, so the decision to proceed with the works will be made on a daily basis. We will continue to provide regular updates on our runway operations on the Heathrow Noise Twitter page as usual.