Originally Posted by
rutankrd
This also belies the oft quoted Long Haul needs feed to support xyz marginal routes - No one ever gives an example because at thirty % and declining there are rather few routes where the feed makes the difference between operating or not a particular route to/from Heathrow.
That's an interesting assertion.
Clearly the proportion of transfer traffic varies by route. The only published stats I have for that breakdown are about 10 years old - if you have any more recent ones, perhaps you could share them ?
If we discount UK domestic transfer traffic (out of a total of 6% of LHR pax, it isn't going to skew the results much) then we are left with Europe-to-Europe transfer traffic and the balance where one or both legs involves a longhaul flight.
Given our location near the top left corner of Europe, it's not immediately obvious why intra-European transfer traffic should account for an overwhelming proportion of transfer traffic, particularly as almost half the seats out of LHR are on longhaul routes.
Logic would suggest that there must be a fair number of longhaul routes that contribute significantly to the 30%.