We have a friend that says "You think flying out of Toronto is busy, you should try Heathrow. You think everything has stopped it's so busy." Well I tried flying out of Heathrow today in my C310. I had traffic at 100%. Man, was it nuts.JimCYWG

Lol. I just bought Gary Summons' Heathrow scenery - it's not that great: lousy framerates and blurry photorealistic ground textures, but, then again, I have everything set to Maximum. With 100% ai traffic, you could be sitting on the taxiway for a long time, watching FS9 ATC get all confused when there are more than 3 planes taxiing around. What I usually do, after admiring all the nice ai traffic, is to clear everything out by forwarding time by 5 minutes. This means I get to actually depart while I'm still young.ricardo

Once, I was trying to fly out of there in the Captainsim 727, and it honestly took nearly forever just to get across the active runway to finish taxiing for takeoff....Was a good thing I had a lot of fuel onboard.... :(

Did you have enough to get to Gatwick?:DXP Home SP2Asus P4P800-SE Intel 3.0GHZDDR 400 D/C 4x512MBLeadtek 6800GT 256MB (77.72)SB AudigyCH Products Yoke/Pedals USBSee you in the fence...CYYZ

LAX is extremely busy as well, one of my favorite airports

If you have a decent afcad, the experence is better.

Yes, also in real life Heathrow uses one runway for landings and the other for take-offs, which certainly makes take-offs quicker!The exception seems to be first thing in morning & last thing at night when noise abatement is better served by having the smaller number of take-offs shared across both runways.You can use Afcad to set one runway in each direction for landings & the other for take-offs.Also, you can use Ken Salter's FS9 Configurator (available in the library I should think) to increase AI traffic's taxi speed - this is especially useful for getting arrivals to clear the runway quickly.

Apart from speeding up the AI as described above, you can also use AISmooth to prevent go arounds and create holding patterns. As for holding to cross an active, I recommend ignoring ATC and using your best judgment to cross when there is a sufficient gap in the traffic. The ATC engine is set up to have you hold as long as there is an aircraft that has been cleared to land but has not yet switched to ground control. If there are several aircraft on approach that means holding until the last one has switched to ground, which can take forever. If there is a sufficient gap between landing aircraft, just taxi on. ATC will tell you to resume taxi as soon as you have crossed the runway centreline anyway. You can also skip a queue holding for takeoff by using a different entry than the rest of the traffic. You will still get the prompt to request takeoff clearance.

everytime I try using AI Smooth, it seems to be confused because I have so much traffic and planes just disappear or stay in holding patters forever

When I run low on patience, I just bump up the acceleration to 8x for a second. Then I just slide right in to the front of the line :)

>everytime I try using AI Smooth, it seems to be confused>because I have so much traffic and planes just disappear or>stay in holding patters foreverI find AISeperation works much better for me.

In the air at LHR it is not much better. I recall that almost every flight I have taken from New York to LHR (over 20 total) has resulted in some hold time the next morning, 10 to 15 minutes at least as we circle down the stack.Only if I am on a flight that is getting in very early might we miss the hold.Overall (number of flights and passengers), LHR is the world's 4th busiest airport (ATL, ORD and LAX are #'s 1-3 respectively). However, LHR is #1 when it comes to international passengers served.Not even in league with JFK, which ranks #20 overall and #7 with international traffic.Regards,http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...R_FORUM_LOU.jpg

I must admit, I am also guilty of "fast forwarding" the clock by 1 minute to clear the queue. This is however a better option than my other bad habit - cutting up the grass. :-) Heathrow Ground doesn't like me very much....

You don't even need to "fast forward" the clock..... Pause the sim first, then increase the sim to 8X and back to 1X.... AI will still reset itself in the process, and once unpaused, zero time will have "mysteriously disappeared".. :(The only time I ever do that is when I'm landing, and am getting tired after 1 or 2 traffic-related go-arounds.... When I'm taxiing for takeoff, I'm usually still patient enough to just wait my turn.. (If it's really busy,the AI waiting in front of me will just disappear one-by-one anyway...)

One major advantage of getting rid of AI traffic at busy airports is that this will increase your framerates, and, trust me, if you're at Gary Summons' Heathrow, with everything turned up, realistic weather, in a frame devouring addon, you'll be needing all the framerates you can get for take off. It's also a good idea to turn off "can crash with other airplanes". Otherwise you'll be restarting the sim 'til the cows come home. ricardo