Skipness - At this point, I think the board may benefit all round if we concentrate our minds on more constructive grounds for discussion. May I invite you to put this unfortunate Delta JFK misstep behind you and instead concentrate your mind on the question I put to you in the final paragraph of post #1552.
Time for something a little lighter for our bank holiday musings. So permit me to run a special Easter Sunday parable by you. Afew years ago you recall visiting Manchester and feeling hungry. You remember buying a great sandwich with all the trimmings for £1.72. Your friends at the bank tell you that the same sandwich bought there today today would cost you £2.53.
Now you find yourself in London, and this time you're even hungrier than you were back in Manchester. That sandwich would be the perfect remedy. But there is a problem. The shop in London tells you that the same sandwich there will cost you around £200.00, although that price-tag seems to increase by the week. And even worse, the sandwich can only be sold on a supporting foil tray. 'Trays for London' tell you that they reckon this will cost you another £200.00.
Fortunately, those nice guys at the council tell you that they'll get their ratepayers to stump up £100.00 towards the cost of the tray. They will divert the funds from the more deprived peripheral areas of the borough which everyone seems to have forgotten about. So the cost to you will be £300.00 and the council will stump up £100.00 for a total of £400.00. But you are really hungry. And that sandwich would really satisfy a pressing need. And all your mates in Europe are getting nice sandwiches already.
You are told there is a chippy midway between London and Brighton. They'd do you a pack of chips for just £80.00. But you think their chips are greasy and wouldn't satisfy your hunger the same. It's all so frustrating. Your friend in Istanbul is buying an entire banquet for £80.00.
You know that sandwich is the one you really, really want. You've had two of them there already and they're yummy. The greasy chips near Brighton are alot cheaper (though still relatively expensive). And you don't fancy them anyway.
So what do you do? Do you buy the £400.00 sandwich? Or the £80.00 greasy chips? Or do you say: "Hang on a minute. None of this is even close to being worth the money! Let's keep the money and spend it on something much, much better for the same price."
So ... back to reality. Manchester's 23L/05R was delivered for £172M, or £253M in today's money. LHR R3, we are told, is facing costs of upto £40,000M if the latest TfL estimates are taken into account. So I ask you: what is the price-point at which you say: "LHR R3 is operationally desirable, but at this price I just have to face reality and say NO WAY!"
I'll accept an answer to the nearest Billion! ;-)
You don't do brevity do you...two secs
At what price point (both in direct costs and considering additional expense required for external supporting infrastructure) do you believe that LHR R3 becomes too prohibitively expensive to pursue? There has to be a number above which alternative options, however sub-optimal operationally, become the only sensible course of action from a financial perspective.
I am not close enough to the project to give you a number as you well know. The Channel Tunnel was a financial black hole in construction but I don't think we should go back to a world where we fly wide bodies across the channel instead of trains into Kings Cross. What both opponents and supporters, you included, are doing is blatant conflating. What TFL has to spend to support LHR expansion or what Highways Agency needs to spend to change any nearby section of the M25 should not just be lumped willy nilly in absolute volumes and added to the cost of Runway 3. Let's see what Howard Davies has to say. Too many people are shrieking maximum or minimum numbers extrapolated from their own a***. btw the cost of Runway 2 at MAN didn't exactly lead to enormous growth requiring tremendous invesment in infrastructure on it's last legs did it?
#conflating
Accepting you cap LHR capacity where it is, tell me honestly, do you see Delta adding capacity at MAN or AMS. STAR coming en masse to MAN, or FRA. Skyteam to MAN or CDG. I think you make some good points but you're avoiding the harsh realities of how this market works. What's the next step forward for the UK having sent a clear message to market the UK won't be expanding hub capacity, I strongly challenge your idea that the likely outcome is more point to point to the regions when they can get a very good deal on a continental hub with an entrenched alliance. Let's wait and see what the review says.
Selling sandwiches is not the same as selling airline seats btw.