Originally Posted by
rationalfunctions
LHR is one of the few true airport 'hubs' in Europe, serving a variety of routes that wouldn't be financially and sometimes operationally viable from individual regional airports. The new runway provides both additional capacity to facilitate domestic flights, and a number of specific measures to enhance connectivity. They outline some of these in their document 'Heathrow Bringing Britain Closer' (search this on google, I can't yet post links)
Irrespective of the debate on if the UK should grow routes from regional airports, the nation will have better access to the world through LHR expansion - albeit with a connection.
That document needs to be read with a very critical eye and specifically the reference to regional connectivity.
The range of domestic connections from/to Heathrow that are commercially viable remain and operate today.
Those that have lost service is procisely because they don’t attact sufficient traffic at commercially viable fares period.
Unless the TAX PAYER picks up the bill via PSO grants they won’t happen runway or no .
As for regional airports lets take an example when Speke had three daily Heathrow flights they bearly handled 700,000 passengers annually yet today they handle close on 5 millions - that a real local and tangible benefit to employment and the economy !
The range of direct services has gone from a few daily Irish Sea and Heathrow to more than thirty across Europe including Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and others.
The north west region also has a rapidly developing Global player just 35 miles down the road and an airport group that contains the two main box and pallet flight operations centres .
As for those routes that somehow exist because of feed into what is one of the largest O&D markets on the planet can you name them ?
If you think Chinese secondary routes- no these are almost pure O&D tourist traffic admittedly inbound they are hugely loss making heavily subsidised and more about political projection by Xi Jinping and his cohorts.British Airways found out the hard way with Chengdu it failed to meet their high set yield potential upfront from day one.
Its interesting that of the three European Hub and Spoke centres, Heathrow has only 30ish % and declining of Transit and Transfer passengers yet still handles more 70 million passengers today, think about that with the fluff of connections supporting secondary anfd thirtory routes.
Perhaps the feed is needed to support those thirty odd daily flights to that well known marginal destination with a French statue in the bay !
Not that that destroys any regional potentials at just ask the Birmingham Airport Management this week.