Originally Posted by
PAXboy
DRuk Your reporting of this has been consistently fascinating. Why do you think the mgmt are doing this? What do they gain if their figures are believed?
That's a very good question.
Other than the fact that it obviously looks good to make its airlines' performance appear quieter and greener than its own rules actually allow, I have no idea what Heathrow feels that it stands to gain by publishing stats that any bright GCSE Maths student could see through.
Certainly Heathrow is well aware that the results don't stand up to scrutiny - but its response to any challenge is to shoot the messenger (or subcontract that job to NATS
) and describe criticisms as "bizarre", rather than attempt to explain or justify its figures.
Take top-placed
BA shorthaul's results, for example. We're asked to believe that it scored only 43 points short of a "perfect" 1,000 despite coming close to bottom (45th out of 50) for engine emissions and two-thirds of the way down the rankings for Night Quota compliance.
Incredibly, Heathrow has only docked BA a little over 0.6 of a point for every place lost across the seven parameters measured (adjusted by the appropriate "
weighting"). That would mean, were BA to be the worst-performing airline (i.e. in 50th place) for every parameter, that instead of the zero points that the rules stipulate, it would still be awarded a score of 833 out of 1,000 !