Thanks once again for your replies OverRun.
I was a bit surprised when I checked the population of Edinburgh, and it showed as only 450,000. And 9 million pax/year. From the airline economist's viewpoint, that is at the bottom end of traffic needed for a decent sized airport, and I would think it might even be getting below that needed to have commercially viable B777-300ER operations on a daily basis. There is not much scope for bigger planes at smaller airports because it drops the frequencies down and the punters prefer higher frequencies. The medium sized 250 pax A330-200 is better fit at a place like Edinburgh than a 350 pax B777-300ER.
Although the population of Edinburgh is only 450,000 the catchment area for the airport has a much higher population. The majority of the Scottish population live within 2 hours drive of Edinburgh Airport and Edinburgh is a major business and tourist destination.
To quote from Wikipedia;
Edinburgh is the most competitive large city in the UK according to the Centre for International Competitiveness.
Edinburgh is the UK's second financial centre after London and Europe's fourth by equity assets.
[68] In world terms, it ranks ahead of Dubai, Amsterdam and Washington in the Global Financial Centres Index.
Tourism is an important economic mainstay in the city. As a
World Heritage Site, tourists come to visit such historical sites as
Edinburgh Castle, the
Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Georgian
New Town. This is augmented in August of each year with the presence of the
Edinburgh Festivals, which bring in over 4.4 million visitors,
[67]
Add to this the fact that there are far more Scots and people of Scottish descent living outside Scotland than inside, many of whom return to Scotland quite regularly, and there is a large untapped potential for long-haul flights from EDI.
Over the past decades, some would argue that it suited BAA and BA to try to route as many pax as possible via their LHR and LGW hubs but many in the business community in Scotland feel that the lack of direct long-haul flights has harmed Scotland's competitive position. It appears that this situation may well improve in years to come if we believe BAA’s master plan for EDI. This (
http://www.edinburghairport.com/asse...nv2_single.pdf ) predicts passenger numbers will increase to 13.7m by 2013. The forecast for 2013 to 2030 predicts that "Passenger numbers could grow to 26 million a year, with over half travelling to and from international destinations."
At the moment, millions of passengers every year travel from EDI via European hubs, such as London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, to long-haul destinations. UK CAA statistics show, for example, that there are enough passengers from Scotland to Hong Kong per annum to justify a daily direct flight. At the moment, EDI's ambition is to add some extra long-haul flights to North America and the Middle East. I haven't seen the detailed statistics, but I expect that there are enough passengers to and from the Far East and Australasia to justify a regular direct flight to Singapore.
The ACN at that weight is 79, which is pretty close to the 74 PCN of the 06/24 runway, and using the 10% rule, the pavement engineer is almost certain to grant a concession. A final check is still needed by the aircraft performance engineer that it will hit nothing in the climb on a hot windless day with an engine out. JT can do that [IMG]file:///C:/Users/Colin/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif[/IMG]
Looks like it could be a viable operation to me. Except I'd prefer to fly A330s and make more money from it.
Given your comments in an earlier post about the damage that 777-300ERs are causing to pavements at some airports, how likely is it that the 10% rule would be applied for this aircraft type? With the 10% rule, medium range routes from EDI with a 777-300ER might be possible but without it they would not. I agree with you regarding the A330. It is better suited to EDI's PCN and runway length than a 777-300ER and better suited to testing the market potential for long-haul from EDI.
It is still possible that the PCNs of taxiways Lima and Mike (unknown but possibly 31F/C/X/T) are constraints for long-haul ops from EDI. If anyone reading this thread knows the PCNs for these taxiways then please let me know.