I think there’sa bit of confusion here about what this is really about. The primary difference between the MASstandards and the CAA standards as applied to Northolt would be that ifstrictly applied, the licensed or declared runway distances at Northolt would benotably shorter than they are today. Northolt has effectively arrester beds in lieu of any decent RESA strips(Runway End Safety Areas). CAA rulesdictate you can’t use arrester beds instead of RESA, but you can certainly addthem at the end of a pre-existing RESA if you so wish (to stop an aircraftrunning into a building or dual carriageway etc.). Additionally, there are subtle differencesin RFF (fire and rescue capability) compliance, lighting, signage etc. which in comparison to the disparityin runway safety standards are minor.
The point hereis that an MOD funded/underwritten aerodrome has all of a sudden become 70-80%a civilian airport in terms of throughput, taking business from Farnborough,Biggin, Oxford, Luton etc. whilst not having to meet the same standards andincurring the same compliance costs. All those commercially/privately owned airports which do have to complywith civil standards are slightly miffed at the additional competition (or the safety authorities) turning a blindeye to the lack of compliance. Whatthey are after is simply a level playing field on standards. Northolt is completely unique – it’s theonly ‘military’ airport in the UK which has near on 80% civilian traffic – if it wassay 25% civil, people might not be getting so hot and bothered about it. May be the only military airport in Europe like that?
It’s not aboutthe cost, Northolt access is generally more expensive than those otherairports, albeit the costs of running the airport should dictate that it wouldbe appropriate to charge a lot more per civil landing than they do, otherwisethey arguably fall foul to further accusations of unfair competition in so much thataccess by those civil flights are still being underwritten in part by government coffers - our taxpayers money.
Civil slot capacityat Northolt was increased last April by a significant amount without any formal publicenquiry, the MOD would argue that wasn’t necessary, despite the fact that iteffects the same people living close to the Heathrow activity.
The CAA will saythat despite the runway distances being listed in the AIP today being strictlyspeaking (as per CAP168) incorrect, the operators going into Northolt should take it uponthemselves to ignore those ‘declared’ distances and work out for themselveswhat they should really be – but nobody would ever do that, all pilots acceptthe AIP published numbers as gospel and will not drill down any further – it’s an officialcivil aeronautical publication. Uniquely, Northolt is the only military airport with data in the UKAIP - therefore it is a 'special case'. Yet it doesn’t comply with thestandard civil requirements.
Were the CAAtold in a court of law to enforce CAA standards as per the CAP168 onto Northolt in order toassume the correct role as protector of civil aviation safety standards within the UK (as is their role under the Airports Act),in light of the 80% civil usage of Northolt, then it is likely that the useable (declared)runway length would be shortened and a number of aircraft with poor runwayperformance may be limited on what they can take in or out of there, or in somecases, may not be able to use it at all. If the Landing Distance Available (LDA) was down to say 1300m or so, then theimpact would be very significant – only the lightest jets or those with thebest landing performance would be happily continuing access at Northolt. Could end up being predominently King Air territory only in worse case.
So, much as itsounds like ‘sour grapes’, it has everything to do with safety standards and alevel playing field in the sector, fairness of competition. Thetrigger point for getting peer airport’s shackles up was when they arbitrarily increasedthat capacity for business aviation last year without any major consultation. Yes it’s good to make good use of governmentassets but not when artificially pretending you have a longer useable runwaythan you really have – under the same rules applied to all other civilaerodromes.
Shall be interesting to see what happens.