I noticed that ATIS for Sydney said runway 07 for arrivals early this morning. I say LAN A340 land on 07 and wondered if the A380 would also land on 07. Well nope, it didn't. The Etihad A340 landed 16R then the A380 straight after. I checked ATIS again and it still said 07 for arrivals!

Are they trying to avoid the A380 landing on 25 or 07?

Hi Chainsaw,

From what i understand, 747 and now A380 pilots can still elect to land on 16R /34L even if ATIS advises that 07/25 is in use. I think they will only ever land on 07/25 if weather conditions are unacceptable or 16R/34L is closed for other reasons. I'm thinking that this is probably why they want to close 07/25 for a year to expand them.

Cheers

Hi Pat,

Thanks for that. Now that you mention it, I think I have read it somewhere.

Ta

A pilot can request to use any runway for arrival or departure , but the request will only be granted by ATC if it is an operational requirement . In other words , in the example yesterday , although runway 07 was the runway in use for arrivals some aircraft were using runway 16R as the crew made a request due to operational requirements . It is different for the A380 though just to complicate matters . It can only use 16R/34L for operations due to runway width . This runway surface was widened to accommodate the extra wing span of the aircraft , runway 07 although wide enough for 747's is not wide enough for the A380. B747's often use the shorter runway07/25 even for departures when the wind favours that direction .