BHX5DME.
Interesting on the news today David Cameron apparently "Warming" to a 2nd runway at Gatwick.
Will be very interesting if the airport commission report back that due to high pollution around LHR , Gatwick is their preferred option to recommend for a 2nd runway.
However nothing is that simple.
That would suggest that Airports Commission has been leaned on and its findings interfered with.
With Easy Jet saying they would prefer a 2nd runway at LHR and many long haul scheduled airlines seemingly just using Gatwick to lodge until they can get into LHR there are problems.
Low cost airlines probably don't contribute enough to re pay for a 2nd runway at Gatwick and what percentage of flts are low cost out of their 50% perhaps ?
Another article claiming last week that therefore a congestion charge may be needed around Gatwick to pay for a 2nd runway and curb pollution.
Gatwick’s management would need to considerably increase airport charges for airlines in order to finance a second rwy. The problem is that many may not put up with it and leave: no frills to Luton or Stansted, non-UK legacy to Amsterdam, etc..
The govt may have to try and force the big scheduled airlines to migrate from LHR to Gatwick, but how would that work .. has failed before ?
Star Alliance get moved to to Gatwick but Sky Team you can stay at LHR.. would Star Alliance buy that with probably higher business passenger revenue out of LHR.
Oh if we could only go back to the glory years at LGW in the 70s/80s/90s when it was a much fairer balance between the two. Be interesting to see how it develops and how many years it takes to get a new runway up and running in the SE !
Nigel
Can’t be done, the days of government-owned carriers and government-owned airports and a heavily regulated aviation industry are over.
Also bear in mind that in the "
glory years at LGW in the 70s/80s/90s", all the UK carriers that were denied access to Heathrow and forced to use Gatwick as a base went belly-up.
Only VS didn’t, because it was able to move its base to Heathrow.