Stansted again! BORING! Come on Luton!!

[Buster the Bear]

STANSTED TOPS GROWTH LEAGUE

30 May 2003 11:28

STANSTED has been crowned the fastest growing major airport for the third year in a row, recording a growth a 17.5% in 2002.

According to figures released by the Airports Council International, over 16 million passengers used the airport during the year, making it the 64th busiest in the world.

The airport benefited from the upsurge in low-cost carriers using Stansted, including Ryanair, EasyJet and Air Berlin.

Stansted business development and planning director Chris Butler said: "We have well over 100 scheduled destinations available from Stansted this summer and expect another very busy year.

"To keep pace with continuing demand we have secured planning permission to develop Stansted to serve 25 million passengers a year."

[Buster the Bear]

Basik Air, Flying Fynn, Norweeegian, Sky Eu-rope amongst others feel that London is best served via Stansted and not Luton.

Rubbish, if you land at Stansted at the weekend, you might as well walk than get a train to London. Are TBI promoting this, NO!

Land at Luton, short coach ride to the Parkway, and AWAY you go! Do this at Stansted at the weekend and............?

Nuff said. Make Buster head of PR at Luton. At least I have an idea of outside forces affecting my local airport!! Mind you, I am a sucker for fish!! YUM, YUM!!!!

[flysr4ever]

Travelled through STN for the first time last week. While it is a lovely place and all, I much prefer Luton despite the run down departures area etc. No long queues or walks.

[Tom the Tenor]

Stansted is almost as unpleasant as Shannon! Cork is a brilliant airport! Fly to Cork!

[Bumz_Rush]

With the vast sums of money spent at Stansted I am not surprised at the wide open spaces. But they still manage to have taxi way hold ups. The train to the gate is great fun, the first time......There are no lounges at the remote terminal. The ABBOT arrival the worst air space allocation is I beleive the Essex Radar (funded by EGSS base operators) solution to EGSS arrivals, but the death of EGGW It adds 10% to all short haul flight times to Luton. I don't want to see Cambridge, again.
As a passenger I used Stansted last week, Air Berlin, fantastic service, but Stansted......Tried to find the shuttle bus to Metro (sorry Harrods).......asked so many people, eventually found it......
Luton, OK it gets busy, and congested in terminal...NOT a crap terminal any more.....Ann Summers and Dixons what else can crew ask for.......Monarch flights are my usual to GIB or AGP, check in go to lounge relax, and await your call to the gate......excellent lounge.
Easy.......fight to get accurate information......fight to the check in.... fight to the gate join a Q.... fight to get on aircraft..... This is a contradiction in terms.

Rant over......Go for it Buster...... Who takes all the photos that are on airliners.net?????

[Powerjet1]

Went through Luton last week using the Aer Arran service to Galway. Great flight and good service. Agree wiyh BR, departure area is fine, good variety of shops, eating & drinking establishments. Plenty of seating and only a very short walk to the aircraft, Come on TBI, pull a great deal out of the bag and drag in some new business/routes etc.

Heard last week that NOW are very close to launching bookings on their website. Slight delay due to 'corporate matters'. Mid June, is the proposed time for the start of on-line reservations, with flights to Lisbon.,Rome & Hamburg looking the likely launch routes starting mid August. Other routes will follow very quickly therefterin a matter of days.

[OLNEY 1 BRAVO]

What a splendid idea ... as long as he doesn't insist on putting the "paw prints" on the floor of the terminal again!

Seriously, putting anyone into that post would be an improvement as I believe that all the PR functions have been outsourced to an external agency ... and I bet they are retained on a "reactive stance" basis rather than a "positive stance" which might see them actually marketing the place.

Silly me .... I forgot ... that would require TBI to spend money and they don't like doing that .. unless it is that given to them by Luton Borough Council. And before anyone suggests giving them advice, forget it .... they always turn it aside because they are first class professionals running the best airports in the country.

Err not!

[Eddie Ginley]

OLNEY 1 BRAVO

Completely wrong - LTN has its own PR function alive and well and living in the Terminal...

TBI Group may have an external PR function, not really sure though.

However, I'm sure they'd be very happy to listen to any informed advice - but what exactly would that advice be?

Trouble is that STN / LGW and LHR all being part of the quasi-governmental body BAA (Buster's Airports Authority) - who batter the media with information and press releases constantly, one of them is bound to "hit home" now and then*.

And LTN tends to get sidelined in perception terms (there's still a lot of resistance out there when it comes to recognising LTN as a 'London' Airport. Even so - you're all correct LTN does have a lot to offer over STN (in this case).

*However didn't anyone else see the recent PR from LTN which found its way into some papers and mags? - claiming a 25% increase in Easter pax figures in 2003 over the same period in 2002?

It seems that someone at least is doing her or his job at Buster's fave airport...

Love
Smooth Eddie

:sad:

[Buster the Bear]

Mr Ginley you really are naughty 'Busters' Airport Authority'!

UK Airports Passenger Figures
March 2003

Mar 2003 Mar 2002 % +/-

Heathrow 4,886,643 5,318,240 -8.12%
Gatwick 2,146,954 2,291,465 -6.31%
Stansted 1,332,562 1,134,791 17.43%
Manchester 1,209,997 1,317,773 -8.18%
Birmingham 610,485 559,316 9.15%
Edinburgh 595,606 561,473 6.08%
Glasgow 561,345 540,046 3.94%
Luton 509,326 473,358 7.60%

Not all bad news!

Mr 1 Bravo, you know that was Debon Bear who left those purple paw marks on the tinminal floor!

My paws are too big to operate a camera, so it is not me taking the shots on that web site.

[Powerjet1]

Buster

Your right. The figures are moving the right way as April showed an 18.4% increase to 540,053 over Apr 02, although some distortion obviously because of Easter. Rumours of extra Ryan flights later this year might now becoming a step closer a little bird tells me which would really push up the figures. We shouldn't have to wait too long to find out if this is will become fact rather than fiction.

[Buster the Bear]

That 'bird' you mentioned has visted my enclosure and I would agree with you totally. Mind you, he has also visited Wally the albino Wallaby who lives next to me. All this bird wants to do is eats his fleas!

I had not seen the April pax figures. Hapag/Ryan-Bergamo/Helios are obviously proving a huge boost to the town of Luton and TBI?

Add to this Now-Fly-Soon (Hopefully)?

Can we expect to see an increase in our easyBase soon?

Ryanair is now the world's third largest international scheduled carrier.

The babies were too scared to come, bet the harp's would love a fight locally as slots in Essex are now quite rare since they bought Buzz for a few quid!

Mr Ginley, what do you think?

[OLNEY 1 BRAVO]

Eddie - point noted although I didn't think that was the case.

Regardless, whoever is doing the PR, or perhaps more importantly Marketing role isn't doing very well as I now understand that Hapag Lloyd Express are pulling off of the Luton -Cologne route at the end of June due to poor load factors.

[Powerjet1]

Olney 1 B

If that's true about HLX, i'm not surprised. Understand loads are only hovering around 43/46% and whilst is is increasing, it is only very slowly and cannot really be sustained. Helios, on the other hand are between 70/80% which is pretty good for the winter period and bearing in mind the detrimental effect the Iraq war had on that region.

As for Ryan, figs indicate some 13,000 pax on the twice daily Bergamo route for March and considerably more in April. In this connection, I believe the Stansted-Bergamo ops are reducing from 4 to 3 daily flights from end of June but LTN staying at 2.

[Powerjet1]

Further to the above, had it confirmed from the horse's mouth, HLX are withdawing CGN-LTN from July. Competition from Germanwings into STN a major factor I believe. So STN have done it again.

[Buster the Bear]

Mr 1 Bravo told me of the bad news today.

Come on TBI, you have a GOLDEN ASSET in Luton Airport, folk might well be asking serious questions soon, and we all know that the concession charge is no longer the 'hold back' to growth and airport development!

Competition from GermanWings. If the press release says this, I promise to kiss an albino Wallaby! YUK!!!

Helios have competition in Cyprus Airways at Stansted. easy have loads of competition from Ryanair in Essex also. GermanWings are tiny fodder at Stansted, the big player is Air Berlin, but who knows which airport is clearly subsidising which airline ????

It will be a sad day when the yellow taxi's disappear!

[niknak]

The reasons Stansted will always be superior to Luton are:

1 - If you live anywhere east of the M1, Luton is a sod to get to, always has been, and short of putting a duel cariageway from the M11, always will be (it takes me 1hr 10mins to get to Stansted, 2 and half hours to Luton, yet the road mileage to Luton is 10 miles less).

2 - Stansted has much more space to develop, land, runways, car parks, Burger Kings et al.

3 - As Buster has alluded to - Stansted is run by a professional airports operator, who are not afraid to take sound commercial decisions when it comes to investing in the future, Luton is not.

I would love to fly from Luton, because as I said, it's that bit nearer and usually a little bit cheaper, but the hassle factor in getting there makes STN the winner every time.

[Powerjet1]

TBI have got to get their finger out because at the moment they're operating a c**p outfit and loosing business left. right and centre to their Essex neighbour. They want LTN to be taken seriously as London's 4th airport but seem incapable of biting the bullet and actually doing something about it. C'mon, building the business does mean you actually have to part with some pennies and put your thinking caps on. Not too much evidence of this at the moment.

Regards HLX. Looking at the CAA stats for the first 3 months of this year, GW, which operates exactly the same number of daily flights into STN from CGN as HLX does into LTN, carried more than twice as many pax as HLX, even though HLX fares were often slightly cheaper. Why such a difference?. As you say Buster, Helios & easy have massive comp from STN without probs so why such a difference between GW & HLX pax nos on the CGN route. Must be a German thing.............

[LTNman]

Regarding road access for the four London Airports Stansted is in last place with 5,294,000 living within 60 minutes drive time. Luton is in second place with 7,094,000. Stretch that out to 2 hours and Stansted is again in last place with 16,772,000 people living in its catchment area while Luton is in first place with 22,032,000. All is not lost either when it comes to public transport. Being so close to the M1 it has an extensive coach service while 9 trains an hour head for London with 4 trains carrying on to Gatwick and Brighton. There is also a main line service to the Midlands. Trains also run all night and get to London in just 2/3rds of the time it takes trains from Stansted.

[carbootking]

how many different airlines use luton and stansted iv counted at stansted theres atleast 40 and atleast 10 cargo can u luton people tell me how many at luton dont count your little propeller ones1 thing luton has got more of is decent hotels stansted hasnt . as for people using both airports wne i was doing off site parking it amazes me how far people come ie north wales and still do u ask them why not go to east midlands or any other they mostly come out with didnt know they went there .

[LTNman]

Take easyjet out of the equation and Luton is handling less passengers than it did 30 years ago when Court Line reached its peak despite the new terminal and new rail link. Luton is though the UK’s number one when it comes to executive jet movements.

As for future investment the only things planned for the short term are a new pier serving the 3 north apron stands that can handle 747’s and 3 of the stands on the 6 pack that can handle Tristar’s DC10’s etc. Part of the unused lounge above the check-in area will be opened up and plans for a new immigration hall are well advanced.

TBI revealed at a recent meeting that today’s capacity without further expansion are as follows:

• Terminal capacity 12-14mppa
• Stand capacity 12 -14mppa
• Runway capacity 14-16mppa
• Runway with full II taxiway 18-22mppa
• Infrastructure - road, rail and air 15-20mppa

All this on an original planning application for a new terminal that would handle 5 mppa but then it was Luton Council that applied for planning permission to itself when it was running the airport. By claiming 5 mppa it avoided an expensive public enquiry.

[Buster the Bear]

Luton town's controversial new owners have whipped up a storm by deciding to change the club's name.


Loyal Hatters fans are fuming after finding out the club could be renamed London Luton - the same as the local airport.

SunSport broke the news to stunned Luton Supporters Club chairman Mark Chapman.

He raged: "It's a disgrace. It's like renaming Bolton Wanderers Manchester Bolton. "We are nothing to do with London."

What is next, London Luton Wildlife Park?

http://www.justplanes.net/images/030615_F9_KaiBlockZ.jpg

That is me on the tail!!!!!!!!!!!!

[aviaraptor]

Ninnak

"Professional Airport operator" - that'll be the one that managed to close three airports in Jan 03 at one time leaving only LTN open.

Seem to recall that STN was closed for many hours and Luton took the FR diverts all night. And guess what the met office advised that LTN had six inches of snow cf to STN's five.

The result: eJ were apparently delighted at the performance of their old sparring partner and none too happy with their new BAA friends.

One of the resaons that Luton ain't doing as well as it could is that there is some talk of the new start ups and some established operators at LGW and STN receiving discounts to the regulated charges. It was alluded to in the MOL FR TV prog on Wednesday. Now given that BAA is a quasi monopoly (95% market share and therefore dominant) they aren't allowed to do that. However, if North Terminal is like a "ghost town" then you can see why the are dead keen to get any traffic in.

Last time (c1992) when STN nicked FR LTN took its case to the EU and won. BAA were "told off" - naughty naughty - but the damage was done.

I think the HLX move was more to with Germany UK flights rather than LTN per se. Manchester was reduced to a single operation from double daily.

The market is changing rapidly and think this one is not played out yet. I would have thought that FR or EZY would have done something to stop NOW by now. But then again perhaps they won't need to.

[rentaghost]

"As for future investment the only things planned for the short term are a new pier serving the 3 north apron stands that can handle 747’s and 3 of the stands on the 6 pack that can handle Tristar’s DC10’s etc. Part of the unused lounge above the check-in area will be opened up and plans for a new immigration hall are well advanced."

As per LTNMAN's posting above, thought I'd share this official 'gem' with you all... Yes LTN are planning extensions for 747's, L1011's, and DC10's - all well and good, but exactly how many Airlines are still using L1011's / DC10's?

Also, omitted was that good old TBI were not clever enough to object to LBC with regard to the building of the new BAe Systems building on the hill after '26' departures... bad move i'm afraid... the height of this new building will prohibit max load 'long haul' twin operations due to obstructions!!!

Nice one TBI!!!

[Buster the Bear]

rentaghost, the news (If true) about ground obstruction clearance is shocking!

Anyway, I am off to buy a load of ear defenders, I will make my fortune in November when I sell them all locally! I cannot await the bun fight that is sure to kick off soon!?

Curious? All will be revealed soon. Trust Buster!

[LTNman]

“Trust Buster”

Lets not forget that Buster reported that baby bears were coming to LTN. Not much chance of any additional harped 200’s coming to LTN due noise but 800’s that’s another story!

As for Tristar’s and DC10’s they are not the only wide bodies that will fit on the stands.

The BAe site will be exactly 2Km from the end of the Runway.
Looking at the height of the cranes the building seems to be three stories. I find it hard to believe that there would be an issue with ground clearance. I also can’t believe the CAA would allow any sort of obstruction.

[Buster the Bear]

LTNman, you seem to think that more Ryanair 200's will not be coming to Luton?

So from my post above, you have guessed at this then? Fancy that! May I suggest that the 200's comply with the same regulations as all other planes under chapter 3 and its annexes, but will also be banned eventually. Those hush kits really do work!!!!!!!

I can assure you that the babies were not only interested in Luton, they were after gaining local and Eurpoean grants to start operations ( Just like they are rumoured to have done in Wales & NE England), NOW! where did this Bedfordshire bound money go?

Correct, I did say that baby was going to happen, but Now! was such a famously closely guarded secret, even bears can be wrong.

A bun fight will happen in November! Who will be throwing?

Mr Ginley can you help, get your magnifying glass out NOW!

Anyway, I have to go and prepare my songs to sing for London Luton FC.

[rentaghost]

The BAe Systems building obstruction is fact. I have it from the horses mouth of 1 operator that they are now unable to use LTN with max loads on widebody longhaul ops.

Its not a question of it being a permanent obstruction, but that of an obstruction should an operator experience an engine failure on t/o.

[Avro Arrow]

Rentaghost

The obstruction you to which refer does not in fact penetrate any particular surface and as such, under CAP 168 and planning TBI couldn't have objected anyway.

The local Council and BAE Systems would have had to get clearance from the UK CAA who were responsible at that time (some two years ago before TBI were owners).

Since earlier this year, safeguarding has been transferred to the airport authority. However, as the obstruction does not penetrate any surface, no objection can be made. Even if you tried to stop it and you give an incorrect call - well you can always be challenged (sued) by developers with deep pockets.

If, of course, the obsruction below the surface precludes a variation to the SID under EOC, then it may be a limiting factor to any aircraft operator who promulgates that advisory (irrespective whether the aircraft is medium or long haul). Remember the runway is only 2160m but the TODA is 3200m

As it is there is a water tower to the west which already is a critical factor and was there long before the BAE Systems building.

Got to say though the most likely future for LTN remains in the lo-cost market and there aren't many long-haul locos pitching up yet.

[Buster the Bear]

Water tower to the West? Nope, just a TV mast and the Chiltern Hills. Huge drop and contour slope off the end of 26/final app 08. Capability Green is around a mile away. Is this where the new aerospace building is?

So rentaghost, you are wrong! Or are you?

Avro Arrow. Never saw one, but was it something to do with the Delta project and Vulcan?

I love the Victor!

[LTNman]

Stand by the new hotel at the Ibis roundabout and look into the murky distance. At the very back of Capability Green (2Km) you will see two low red cranes. The new building looks like it is no higher than the building sitting in front of it on the same contour line so where is the threat?

[Avro Arrow]

BtheB

Sorry, I checked with my contact at LTN and there is a water tower to the west that is a factor but it does NOT penetrate any aeronautical surface, therefore it's not a problem for normal operations nor does it infringe CAP 168.

The Arrow can be found on

www.avroarrow.org

You can check me out there..

AA