Yes - I watched the TUI flights from Gatwick and Manchester arrive within minutes of each other! They left just after 6 this morning and arrived ten minutes early.
Both had very unusual landing patterns: The Gatwick plane crossed southwards somewhere between Sidari and Roda, flew down the spine of the island, passing the airport on its left, then eastwards and back north over the channel between Corfu and Albania on its downwind leg - south-easterly at 10 knots today - then turned 180 degrees and landed on runway 16 from the north. The Manchester plane flew down Ionian to the west of Agios Stefanos, crossed eastwards literally straight across the airport at 3,000 feet, turned left to the north and landed as the Gatwick plane did.
That's slightly puzzling, because there was no other traffic, and no reason I could see for not doing a straight-in landing from the north. Maybe ATC were practising approaches - they've had nothing apart from flights from Athens and Preveza for six months! Still - great sight-seeing for the passengers.
The landing from the north is classified as moderately difficult because of the hill just before the runway. The normal glide-slope is 3o - the angle the plane descends to the touchdown zone on the runway. The approach from the north on runway 16 is a 3.5o descent - i.e. steeper. Runway 16 also has a deferred touch-down - the thick strips indicating exactly where to land are further from the threshold of the runway, meaning there's less room to land. So they really have to stick the wheels on the target, or they'll have to do an exciting go-around. Fun!
Topic: So how many of us are actually going (hopefully) (Read 215770 times)