Always good to see some actual evidence to support a view or proposition, its where some posters fall down .....
Heathrow - build and be damned, no rationale, no supportive thinking, kneejerk headline ! (FairDealFrank excluded).
That said it is one of the reasons I find part of the Davies submission so lame.
I cannot locate the original NATs article but here is a reference to it.
Four runway Heathrow would cut Gatwick by half | News | Wandsworth Council
Would it really? To an extent maybe, but it isn’t that simple.
The "waiting room" function of LGW would go as LHR slots become available, and BA long haul and VS could also be expected to move there. That frees up slots for U2 and others, and that could impact on LTN and STN as carriers shift from those airports to LGW.
It could mean that LGW doesn’t need another rwy in the short term.
Its an utter mess, therefore how do we try and claw back some of that lost traffic. Do you throw in the towel to AMS CDG FRA or place at least some emphasis on a place like Manchester which has excellent road/rail links, is central for the UK, is within 1 hour of some of the UKs largest Cities and already has double the direct links to the UK regions.
Manchester will not be force fed with traffic , its nonsense to suggest this would happen, BUT given these parameters what would the Germans do ?
The two issues are unrelated, one is insufficient capacity at LHR driving premium business and transfer pax to AMS, CDG, FRA, the other is about growing MAN with more available destinations for which it needs sufficient premium business that makes these new destinations viable.
But call me a cycnic and I know Davies came to Manchester Town hall 18 months back but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Davies would not have been scheduled to head back up the M6 at this late hour if it had not been suggested by the great and the good.
In fairness to Davies, he probably didn’t spend much time in Manchester (or Birmingham, Glasgow, etc.) because the Commission’s remit is to examine a lack of hub capacity at the country’s hub.
....on a wider note gaining political Capital from this could now dissuade a lot of Northern MPs from supporting RW3 if they see the mood music changing, if Manchester is the benefactor then so be it.
I suspect they thought that many of their constituents were ambivalent about their support of expansion down South,
Eg Graham Stringer, Louise Ellman, they thought wrong !
Many northern MPs (and others) are supportive of LHR expansion because they want their areas to have reasonable links to LHR, to help with inward investment and the export drive and to grow their local area economies. Only 7 UK cities have this at present, the thinner routes are pushed out.
An awful lot of Northern MPs may change their position if they think they may be booted out !
No, airport/aviation policy is not an issue that gets MPs elected or defeated. Even the expenses scandal wasn't sufficient to motivate electors to get rid of their MPs (with perhaps a handful of exceptions).
I always find it worth reading the debate involving Shed and FDF. Regarding the necessity of a mega hub, although I accept there is a good case, I've never been totally convinced it's an overwhelming one in terms of benefits to cities and regions outside London and the South East. For example, would a domestic feeder from, say, DTV to Heathrow really generate extra business or would it mainly cause some London only passengers to transfer from rail?
MME-LHR on BD and MME-AMS on KL co-existed for many years. When LH wholly owned BD, many slots were "asset-stripped" from BD to other other carriers in the LH group because of the lack of available slots to use on thicker routes. The effect on MME was catastrophic.
For those travelling abroad from Teeside, would it dilute traffic on the limited KLM service to AMS, or pax who might otherwise use NCL or LBA or even MAN? A similar argument could be put for a LPL-LHR feeder.
Not convinced by this argument, its lack of slots, not lack of pax that closed the thin routes to/from LHR.
Nevertheless, while pax simply transferring at LHR may not spend much money in the UK, I can appreciate that increased numbers can make flights to new destinations and increased frequencies to existing cities viable with the potential for extra cargo as well as passengers.
This is an important point, new long haul routes need feeder services.
Fairdeal Frank : My reading of it is that LHR is roughly 50/50 private funding (ie air traveller funded) and taxpayer funded. LHR is not a pure private scheme by any means ; LGW is mostly private.
AFAIK, the only part publicly funded would be the M25 tunnels, etc..
FDF : I think France has done even worse by building an enormous airport which doesn't work. CDG plus Orly makes LHR plus LGW look quite good!
Nothing wrong with ORY, CDG is a dump.
Fairdealfrank said...
"Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what will happen in 20 years?"
followed by
"We know two things: ... Forget about the sclerotic eurozone (which contains AMS, CDG, FRA) it’s dying from deflation and high unemployment and will probably implode in the medium term)..."
It's enough to frighten one into moving to England and converting one's savings to Sterling to escape the meltdown. How long do you reckon we have left in the Eurozone Frank?
Tell me it is not true. Do you honestly think that 18 vastly different economies, with every country breaking the rules (“the Maastricht criteria”) starting with France and Germany in 1995, and a common currency created for political rather than economic reasons is sustainable in the medium/long term?
As for Ireland, it’s difficult to see why it is a member anyway. Would have made more sense for it to stay out along with Denmark, Sweden and the UK. Eurozone membership eventually killed off the Celtic Tiger.
LHR's rivals can in many cases accept a considerable increase in ATM's from an already high base. Some of these airports are already starting to encourage use by no-frills carriers such as EZY/RYR/NAX/WZZ which offer the potential to significantly grow their throughput going forward. LHR cannot provide similar access.
This is one of the arguments for expansion. FR has made it clear that it won’t be operating from LHR, CDG, FRA. Wouldn’t expect the no frills carriers that follow the FR model to be heading to the big European airports either.
Thus I see less-constrained competitors pulling well ahead based upon a twenty year timeframe. The driver here is not underlying potential demand, but LHR's physical inability to service it. Of course, we are always prone to experience severe turbulence in the wider global economy and "black swan" events always have the potential to derail even the best forecasts regardless.
LHR has the advantage that premium business want to use it. Who knows why, but it’s always been the case, and still is even with the inconvenience of the delays and aggravation caused by lack of capacity.
I too hope to see MAN enjoy a thriving future. However, my list in this case concerned airports which would be leading choices as a hub interchange. Whilst MAN has a limited role to play in this respect (as demonstrated by FlyBe and envisioned by Thomas Cook Airlines), MAN is simply too peripheral from a geographical perspective to serve as a major hub. It is simply too far from the centre of Europe. MAN is also hampered as a hub by not having a single dominant home-based carrier. Future growth at MAN will depend overwhelmingly on servicing the needs of passengers originating and terminating their journeys within its own catchment area. MAN does, of course, benefit from having particularly good ground transport access especially by rail.
Up to a point MAN is not as central, in European geographical terms, as MUC or ZRH for example, but then again it is as peripheral as CPH, DUB, FCO or MAD. Yes, these are capital cities and hubs for their national carriers.
Manchester’s stength is that where a country can support routes to 2 UK cities, it will generally be the second route after London. There are exceptions of course, e.g. in the case of India, it’s Birmingham). The rail access at Ringway is truly impressive.
By the way, I learn alot from these civilised exchanges of views and ideas as well. IMO, more reasoned and researched discussion is far preferable to the soundbites, backbiting and silly name-calling sometimes seen elsewhere. I particularly cringe when I read posters who denounce others for daring to discuss "bad news". I admire the moderators for doing a very tough job, often called upon to regulate discussion topics which are of zero interest to them personally. But these threads do positively interest their intended core audience. I hope they note the generally courteous interaction on the MAN thread. There is a core of constructive contributors drawing in healthy discussion on here. Hopefully we Manchester AA&R regulars are a net positive in driving site traffic volume which the PPRuNe advertisers will appreciate.
Agreed, 100%
PS. How do you get your quote grabs to appear inside those neat blue boxes? Dumb question, I know. Give me a plane over a computer anyday.
(1) copy and paste the text in "the reply to thread" window.
(2) highlight the text, and hit the icon that looks like a speech bubble from the row above. It's the third from the right, left of the hash. Put your mouse over it and the message "wrap [quote] tags around the selected text".
(3) the text will now appear with “
” in front of it, and “
” at the end of it. When read, the text should be in the box.