That is an exageration, only about 45% of Gatwick traffic would gravitate to Heathrow and only if the appropriate service types and fare levels were made available there.
That is a hell of a lot of traffic for LGW to lose!
I wonder if there would be a majority in the Commons for the runway.
Probably.
But if the go ahead was given when it was first asked for, we would not have this problem. When was it first asked for? Oh a mere 40 years ago.
Yes, good point. 40 years ago they were banging on about a "third" London airport and wasting public money on commissions and then ignoring their recommendations (it's deja vu all over again).
Then came the "second force" nonsense, building LGW up as a competitor hub to LHR with a UK private carrier based there to take on BOAC/BEA and later BA at LHR. That policy was such a resounding success that BUA, BCAL, Laker, etc., all went belly-up. VS only survived as it was able to shift it's hub to LHR.
For example, a one hour flight to LHR followed by a fifteen hour connecting flight to final destination.
15-hour connecting flight? You're having a laugh! Even flights to/from SIN and EZE are not that long.
Or a seven hour flight to a state-of-the-art MEB3 hub with a nine hour onward sector. It is much better to break one's journey close to the half-way point than right at the start.
Can be, but not always, especially if it means going the long way around. People have different preferences, and price, timings, convenience also play a part. One cannot generalise.
The hub is not the icing on the cake it was the reason LHR wanted a new runway in the first place. My point was because this decision seems so hard to make it needs to be broken down and the hub vs no hub argument decided first. If the hub idea is a non starter then the LHR case is not as strong. If it is decided that a hub an spoke operation would bebeneficial to the UK then LHR expansion is the only real answer. This idea that you can just build a new runway at any airport in the south east and fix the problem shows a lack of understanding by the government or more likely the need to create an easy political fix.
The hub-and-spoke model can be discussed, however, irrespective of the conclusion, a third (and fourth) rwy is still needed. The reason is very simple:
(1) landing aircraft need to waste time and fuel stacking;
(2) once landed, aircraft have to wait for a stand to become available so more delay;
(3) the aircraft occupying the stand that the landed aircraft wants cannot leave because the queue to take off is so long that no more aircraft can join it, even more delay;
(4) once finally in the queue to take off, an aircraft can have a 20-30 minute wait to be airborne.
This is the reality of Heathrow operations
in normal times when there's no bad weather and no incidents. It's called operating at 100+% capacity.
Do the anti-expansion brigade really think that this state of affairs is acceptable? Apparently so.
BA threatens to move abroad if Heathrow runway goes ahead - ITV News
Clearly a load of b****cks! Give up LHR and move to DUB? Someone else having a laugh! IAG know that BA have nowhere else to go and so does everyone else.