LUTON

[nickmanl]

Still no further news from Easy on their proposed 3 new aircraft to be based at Luton. Seems to me they were just attempting to urinate on Ryanair's fire when they announced routes from Luton last autumn.

The days are also ticking for their so-called massive June announcment....

[LTNman]

Still no further news from Easy on their proposed 3 new aircraft to be based at Luton.

Looks like easyjet has dropped any plans for more LTN based aircraft as it concentrates on its Gatwick base for London expansion. With LTN’s limited spare stands this might not be a bad thing if it can attract more larger capacity Ryanair 737-800’s to night stop.

[nickmanl]

LTNman,

do you know if there are their any plans to build gates across from the eastern apron on the other side of taxiway delta? Surely this space would be ideal and would only result in a small bus journey for the passengers and may encourage other airlines to start services and see Easy place those more aircraft here?

This must be feasible now considering the cash rich owners of ther airport.

[Buster the Bear]

It was rumoured that some of the new routes recently announced by Ryanair from Stansted were to be operated from Luton, but as Ryanair and the BAA have patched up thier fuel cost issue, the planes will now operate from Stansted?

[LTNman]

do you know if there are their any plans to build gates across from the eastern apron on the other side of taxiway delta

There is an old Seras PDF file that shows 2 aprons of 6 stands each on the other side of Delta. I guess if they used the stands for 737’s then it would be 2 aprons of 8 stands each. I can’t see where else they would put new stands in the short term unless they used the short term car park which on the same document shows a further 6 to 8 stands. Don’t know if anyone saw the interview with the operations manager in the TV series on Luton Airport last week. He said that they were a stand short for summer 2005 which stand 60 was meant to correct on May 1st. The stand has yet to be bought into service for self parking aircraft as it was discovered that aircraft now need to park at a different angle.

[Buster the Bear]

When Britannia...WHOOPS....ThomsonFlyTUIFlights vacate their airport offices for Wigmore, could extra stands be created on the office area on stilts?

[Jordan D]

Why is it that us folk that use EZY domestic ex LTN have to wait bloody ages for flights to be released?

Jordan

[LTNman]

When Britannia...WHOOPS....ThomsonFlyTUIFlights vacate their airport offices for Wigmore, could extra stands be created on the office area on stilts?

Haven’t been in their admin buildings since their ops moved to Germany. The buildings are like a tardis and seem a lot bigger on the inside than the outside. I would have thought that the buildings are more valuable to the airport than a couple of stands but then what do I know. The airport’s former petrol station is now under concrete so anything is possible. There was talk last year that the remains of LTN’s first wooden terminal which is still used by Britannia would be demolished.

[Powerjet1]

Maybe one or two things are happening with ryan at LTN this winter so rumour has it. Interesting that SNN flights seem to be operated with a LTN based aircraft. Flights daily ex LTN at 15.10, arriving back into LTN at 18.15.

Also noticed in the timetable section that when you look for flights for Stockholm, apart from Vasteras(VST), it states ' We also fly to Stockholm(Skavsta) from London Luton' . Are we to see flights to both airports from LTN ? or is this just an error.

[nickmanl]

When Britannia leave, bung easyJet in there, bulldoze easyland, concrete it all, whack all the private jets there that are hanging around the main apron and free up some stands there!

Only thing is, dont think Signature will be too happy.

LTNman, where are the remains of the wooden terminal which Britannia uses?

[ebenezer]

Whilst Ryanair may well have decided to start their new routes to Grenoble, Kaunas, Lodz and Poznan from STN instead of LTN, there are according to the runway slot coordinator ACL, virtually no peak-time runway slots left available at STN (stand availability at peak times is also extremely tight).

Therefore, one wonders if Ryanair will be exchanging some STN routes for these new ones and perhaps operating two or three such transferred routes from LTN?

The other option would be to operate them from STN but to utilise off-peak runway slots.

Much as MoL might desire it, you can't get a quart into a pint pot and STN's runway slot availability is just not there at peak times.

Of course, Luton's problem isn't runway slots but stand availability (and as the air traffic guys will tell you, user-friendly airspace).

[LTNman]

LTNman, where are the remains of the wooden terminal which Britannia uses

Drive along the old approach road until you reach the fence that faces taxiway echo by the flying club. Walk along the boundary of the fence by the Britannia building that is on stilts. Where that building ends there is a covered walkway that leads to Britannia’s post room, that’s the old terminal. The building was reduced in size when the old control tower was knocked down a year or two back. The first photo here predates Luton’s first official terminal as it is located on or around stand 11 as seen in photo five and six http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/mk4custo...ageid=%2039258

[Powerjet1]

Re my earlier post this morning about possibe flights to Stockholm skavsta(NYO) from LTN as well as VST, it would appear that flights ex STN to NYO drop from 3 to 1 x daily wef 16/12. Coincidence ?

[Buster the Bear]

Is this Vintage ATCO and his Aldis lamp?



Powerjet1, interesting as Skavsta is a TBI airport!

[vintage ATCO]

Is this Vintage ATCO and his Aldis lamp?

Bu@@er off!

I've looked closely and I don't feature in any of those photos. However I was present when the prototype BAC1-11 arrived at Luton (bunked off school )

[CAP670]

It would be nice to think that Luton gets new services due to its own merits and not just because airlines can’t get into a London BAA airport.

LTNman - you're absolutely right but unfortunately, the Government-backed cross-subsidising monopoly that's BAA has created such an industry mindset over the last 15 years that it'll take as long again to change perceptions. London City has only managed to succeed because it offers a niche product including a London business location that BAA would die for!!

The new facilities at Luton are indeed impressive, given the limitations of the existing site, but the likelihood of the present expanded terminal expanding further is slim. If LTN is enabled to move towards its aspirations (which broadly speaking, accord with the Government's White Paper) then in 12 to 15 years time, the existing facilities i.e. aprons and terminal, will be to Luton as was 'London Airport North' to Heathrow in the 1970s and 1980s.

Meantime, as an interim further improvement, what would make Luton considerably more customer-friendly would be a wider approach road with a smaller roundabout in the Central Terminal Area, linked to full dual carriageways from M1 Junction 10A and from the A505 at Stopsley to the northeast of the Airport.

Whilst improvements to the the roundabout fall firmly within LLAO's remit, the rest is down to a combination of Luton Borough Council, Bedfordshire County Council and the DfT - which going on past performance, means that oil will have run out and hydrogen-cell power taken over, before anyone does anything...

[Whippersnapper]

I think the LTN owners blew it when they built the new terminal in the wrong place. The airport has grown so hap-hazzardly over the years that th only way to make it efficient was to start afresh. They should have built the new terminal to the south of the r/w, with a full length taxiway and parking stands on 3 sides, while leaving the old terminal operational until the new one was ready. Isntead, we have a layout that causes plenty of congestion on the ramp and indoors, with difficulty getting pax to a/c. Much of the work is easing the problems, but how long before the traffic growth overtakes real capacity again.

Operationally, I think the greatest issue is having to back-track from "A" or "B". A full length t/way would allow twice the number of r/w movements, as well as increase safety.

[easy]

-700's launch quite happily from Alpha with no need to backtrack. Your -800's should be able to do the same.

[CAP670]

A full length t/way would allow twice the number of r/w movements, as well as increase safety.

Whippersnapper - I'm afraid that you're incorrect in this statement.

The current runway hourly movement rate is declared by the Airport operator LLAO at 32; air traffic control at Luton achieves and on occasions, exceeds this figure and does so with air transport and corporate aircraft movements, not light aircraft undertaking 'circuits and bumps'.

Not even Gatwick could achieve "twice the number of runway movements" from a single runway i.e. 64 per hour. The construction of full-length parallel taxiways would facilitate at best, about 46 to 48 movements per hour but the local airspace and London air traffic control infrastructure currently, just couldn't handle that sustained level of runway movements at Luton.

As for increasing safety, your comment implies that there is an element of unsafe practice at Luton owing to the need to backtrack 300 or-so metres on each runway.

This is complete and utter rubbish.

The air traffic control procedures in place at Luton are 100% safe and take account of the need to backtrack most departing aircraft ahead of arrivals. Whilst it might look tight on occasions when busy, it's no tighter than at Gatwick or at Stansted; the guys in the Tower know exactly what they're doing and are trained to finely judge things. If a departure proves to be too slow backtracking and it obviously isn't going to work out as planned, then just as at any busy airport, the landing aircraft flies a missed approach - which is a perfectly standard procedure.

As far as your idea of building on the south side of the runway, whilst in theory it's absolutely correct, the airport (currently....) doesn't own that land and even if it did, there's the issue of planning permission and the inevitable Public Enquiry which as we all know, can take years to be resolved.

I don't know if you operate out of LTN (hopefully, as you've made comment, you do).

If so, why not arrange a visit to air traffic and see for yourself how safely and efficiently things are run? E-mail me.

[nickmanl]

Constucting the terminal to the south of the runway would have proved impossible. This is due to the fact the airport is almost right next door to the Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire border and this idea would have meant the terminal being built in Hertfordshire. This is something I can assure you Herts council would have fought desperately. Not only that, the land is anything but flat. It would have made no economical sense to flatten the land out, not to mention re-alligning the roads and demolishing people's homes.

The selected location of the terminal meant it wouldn't have proved as expensive in the flattening of the land and the excavted material was put to good use building the exisiting semi full length taxiway.

Also, what do you mean to make the airport efficient? Please define efficient? Surely an airport which has seen its passenger useage rise from around 1.9 million in 1994, to just under 9 million nowadays per annum, and the fact it posts considerable profits proves it's efficient? If something isn't efficient you suggest it doesn't work...