Extra Easter flights
A significant advertising campaign has sprung up for Heathrow all across the London Underground in recent days, on posters and inside the carriages, describing all the improved resources being applied to the airport over the combined Easter and Wedding/May Day consecutive long weekends.
It opens with the surprising news that Heathrow will be operating 1500 extra flights over this time. That certainly got my attention and I looked hard to ensure I hadn't misread it. Yes, all the posters say 1500 extra flights. I wish I could find the ad on the web.
Now let us say that the whole two weekends span 10 days, including the middle days. And that the 1500 extra flights is counting both arrivals and departures. That's still 75 extra arrivals, and 75 departures, on every day of the 10 days.
I'm sure that operators into this desperately slot limited airport, with its constant holding prior to landing due to continuous maximum rate runway operations, where no meaningful extra slots have been available for a long time, every slot from curfew-off at 0600 to curfew on late in the evening is taken daily, and where a SINGLE slot pair has been said to trade for more than £25m, will no doubt be wondering where all this additional capacity has suddenly come from. And ops departments must surely be planning extra fuel for even longer inbound holding than normally.
But do you know, scrutiny of major carrier schedules over this time shows not a single extra service I can find. Not one, let alone 75 extra departures each and every day. So goodness knows how they will carry any extra passengers if they can't be booked.
Do you think BAA have made just a Teeny Weeny little exaggeration in their advertising ?