Today’s traffic at EGLL during the IAG event exposed serious ground congestion. Departures were queued at both 27L and 27R, blocking arrivals from crossing and reaching Terminal 2. Some aircraft were completely stuck, especially given that the game’s scenery still shows T2 construction (which finished IRL in 2024).
In the real world, Heathrow uses one runway for arrivals and one for departures, alternating them on a schedule. It’s the world’s most efficient two-runway setup.
As @anant previously shared, EGLL’s real STAR procedures support this flow. While Infinite Flight doesn’t support holding stacks like IRL, our inbounds are rarely at Heathrow’s true max capacity.
Consider today: go-arounds were triggered just to sneak out one departure, while dozens waited on the ground, paralyzing the taxiway system. Wouldn’t a structured runway split help manage traffic better?
If arrival flow truly gets unmanageable, “Deny entry, airport is full” is always an option — not ideal, but better than a fully blocked airport.
Not a complaint — just a thought: we can make high-traffic hubs like EGLL run smoother by mirroring the real-world logic.
Unfortunately, the hubs (especially when its airports like Heathrow) see far beyond “realistic” levels of traffic, which essentially forces the controllers to use both runways for takeoffs and landings to try and prevent long queues from forming on the ground and in the air.
(couple that with the fact its the weekend and it just compounds the problem).
Not when it’s this busy. You’d have the departure line stretching the entire length of the airport.
I’m sure the controllers are doing the best - everyone flying in/out just has to be patient.
One of the biggest mistakes was to allow so many departures to pushback and wait in line. Hold at the gate and that way you don’t clog up the runway exits.
Different controllers handle high traffic situations differently. What I observed today was that Approach repeatedly tried to create 7–8nm gaps to give Tower windows for departures — but unfortunately, many of those gaps weren’t large enough, resulting in go-arounds for following aircraft, which actually reduced overall efficiency.
Also, the ground departure rate today was noticeably low, even with both runways being shared. It felt like the combined flow was about 4 arrivals per 1 departure, far less efficient than what a dedicated departure runway could offer.
So, splitting arrivals and departures between runways likely wouldn’t cause worse ground congestion than what we already experienced today — and could actually help stabilize the flow.
One possible reason for this is the difference between the sim and real life. In IF, a landing aircraft can safely float over a lined up aircraft — no actual consequence. But in real life, that’s a major safety issue. Otherwise, we’d be looking at another HND incident all over again (no offense intended — RIP).
7-8nm should be more than spacing, providing people exit the runways fully and quickly and they approach at reasonable speeds (which many often don’t)
As @BennyBoy_Alpha has said, the traffic is far heavier than IRL and arrivals get priority over departures. If you have real life conditions with one arrival runway and one departure runway, all you’ll do is move the problem elsewhere into the approach airspace. It’s easier to focus on arrivals and therefore manage traffic on the ground.
Just to give you an idea of inbounds IRL to IF (in orange) right now (it’s probably not the busiest period of today either):
Here’s a snapshot of EGLL’s morning arrival rush — while IRL flows are directional (more arrivals from the west in the morning), IF often sees arrivals from all directions at once, increasing controller workload.
Today’s real issue wasn’t arrival volume, but departure congestion. Dozens of aircraft were holding short or taxiing, blocking intersections and delaying arrivals.
If we continue using both runways for mixed ops, I agree with @Ganso : limit 5 aircraft at the threshold, 3–5 taxiing, and keep the rest at the gate.
Someone will always absorb the pressure — today it was Tower. For pilots, waiting 10th in line from T5 and seeing others from T2 cut in and depart first isn’t fair. But with 20+ aircraft stacked, it’s impossible for Tower to track sequence.
In real-world split-mode, even with 10+ departures holding, the queue clears in 15 minutes — unlike what we saw today.
To be honest, another challenge at EGLL is the north-south taxiways like C, D, K, L, which often operate as single-lane roads. A cargo aircraft landing on 27R and a passenger aircraft landing on 27L trying to cross to the north side — can easily block each other, adding stress to Ground. This is one of the reasons Heathrow uses runway separation in the first place.
If we were to adopt true independent ops, departure queues would likely clear very quickly. That’s why it’s crucial for Tower and Approach to coordinate more closely — for example, pausing departures temporarily once most departures have been cleared, to ease APP’s pressure.
I saw the carnage you were talking about! We were a convoy en-route to Dublin passing through British airspace assisted by London Center. Saw the congested Heathrow, saw the amount of traffic in the air lining up to land and then I saw the amount of planes occupying ground. I remember telling myself… those poor souls how are they gonna get outta there!
But that’s why we always love EGLL in flight sims innit!
Again, that’s still less than the time when I did that screenshot I did. Plus early on in the morning they often use both runways for arrivals.
Agree with where you’re coming from with restricting the number of aircraft waiting at the end of the runway - most controllers yesterday did that using gate holds (but then get spammed by users constantly asking for pushback!)
They do use both runways for arrivals when there are few or no departures waiting — completely agree with that approach.
As I mentioned earlier, someone always has to take the load. If we expect all aircraft to wait at the gate and only push back when cleared, then Ground has the impossible job of remembering the entire sequence.
Also, since the ATC manual doesn’t explicitly state that aircraft should hold at the gate in these situations, some pilots might be confused or think it’s a controller mistake. So all we can say is “Please avoid sending duplicate messages.”
