HEATHROW

[118.70]

The architects deny any blame :

RSHP denies blame for T5 lighting fiasco | News | Architects Journal

"....
However, the practice said the need for high-wire specialists to replace downlights was a maintenance issue and not a design flaw: ‘The airport were presented with a number of options, which were discussed with them and their maintenance team, and they chose this design.’


A RSHP spokesman said the practice had been in discussion with the airport’s ‘world class maintenance team’ for many years leading up to the terminal’s opening in 2008 and both sides had always been aware of the issue.
The airport’s owners, Heathrow Airport Holdings (HAH) confirmed that it was taking responsibility for changing the bulbs but an HAH spokesman claimed all minutes and information relating to discussion with RSHP about the maintenance of the lights had been lost.


‘It was seven or eight years ago that this decision was made and there is no information as to what was agreed at that time,’ said the spokesman.


RSHP also strongly rejected claims in The Daily Mail that 120,000 downlighter bulbs would need to be changed at a height of 40m. ‘Their number is completely fabricated; it is nothing like that and more like under a 1,000 in the roof,’ said the spokesman."

[CabinCrewe]

Saw the tail back on the Ethiopian 787 on a remote stand... but still under the protective tarpaulin

[DaveReidUK]

All short-listed Davies options to include Heathrow expansion ?

"sources close to the inquiry, which will recommend where a new runway for London should be built, claimed Davies would set out three options for extra airport capacity in the south-east in the interim report: a third Heathrow runway, a four-runway Heathrow, and another runway at both Heathrow and Gatwick"

or maybe not

"Davies said it was "untrue" that all options he would recommend would involve a Heathrow runway"

"One source said Davies had been asked by No 10 to broaden the shortlist to avert any outcry about Heathrow. But this could not be verified."

Heathrow third runway being pushed ahead by government, says Goldsmith | Environment | The Guardian

[DaveReidUK]

Two of Davies' shortlisted options out this week favours third (and fourth?) runway

according to a grammatically-challenged Simon Calder in today's Independent.

Revealed: Take-off for controversial Heathrow expansion as David Cameron faces anger of Lib Dems, London Mayor, and his own party - Home News - UK - The Independent

"According to sources close to the Commission, a third runway at Heathrow will be included - in two forms, with one option to the north and another to the south of the busy airport’s current runways. Either of these could be expanded, to make Heathrow a four-runway airport. Gatwick and Stansted’s proposals for a second runway are also expected to be adopted"

[Skipness One Echo]

ANA are moving their LHR operation from Tokyo Narita to Haneda from the start of the summer schedules.

[DaveReidUK]

Interesting to see that the media don't seem to have picked up yet on the revised northwest runway option that was a late addition to Heathrow's submission to the Airports Commission.

This would involve moving R3 around 250m S of its originally-planned location by replacing the T6 toast-rack (see today's DM graphic below) with satellites aligned E-W, thereby leaving room for R4 running roughly along the line of the M4 (which would be tunneled).

[DaveReidUK]

Airports Commission interim report published

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...interim-report

[Sober Lark]

If Heathrow is presently at 98% capacity, as part of the plan, couldn't some of the 37% of passengers that are in transfer and don't need to be in London or the SE transit elsewhere?

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Sober Lark

If Heathrow is presently at 98% capacity, as part of the plan, couldn't some of the 37% of passengers that are in transfer and don't need to be in London or the SE transit elsewhere?

Yes; KLM and Air France would love them to transfer in Amsterdam or Paris instead. There go tens of thousands of jobs transferred over the Channel.

Then the flights that the 37% used to ride in become no longer financially worthwhile, of course, so they get cut back. Places that get just one flight a day get cut completely. Because Amsterdam and Paris now become better connected to the world than London, businesses set up their European HQ's there instead. And on it goes. If you want to turn the UK into an economic nothingness, you couldn't make a better start.

Incidentally, Heathrow is only at 98% on a benign weather day. In wintry conditions it can be at 120% or more of capacity and strings of flights have to be chopped. Not really the way to a practical transport system.

[Heathrow Harry]

or we just use larger aircraft to move more people?

[Skipness One Echo]

or we just use larger aircraft to move more people?

That's way too simplistic, there are good reasons that must be understood in order to understand how any commercially viable hub operation needs to work.

Frequency of feed matched to departure waves and handy connections with the right balance between a comfortable connecting time and not hanging around. If you simply operate larger aircraft in a mature market like LHR-Europe Airport, you need to drop prices to fill it and lose yield or drop frequency which undermines your feed.

BA decided to use large aircraft in the 90s when the B734s were banished to LGW and LHR operated with nothing smaller then B757s / B763s on short haul. The coming of the locos killed that idea and BA quickly moved to a similar sized fleet of smaller aircraft in the A320 series.

If you decide to operate to Glasgow four times a day with a B777 you're not going to be making any money....
Even if BA slash frequency to JFK and use A380s on all flights, that'll not dent the problem of a lack of capacity. What larger aircraft do you suggest Emirates use?

[DaveReidUK]

couldn't some of the 37% of passengers that are in transfer and don't need to be in London or the SE transit elsewhere?

"Getting rid of transfer passengers will ease capacity constraints" appears to be an increasingly popular argument, but none of its proponents have so far been able to explain how it would actually work.

If services exist from Heathrow to A and to B, how on earth will you prevent or dissuade passengers travelling from A to B from connecting over LHR?

Frog-march all arriving passengers off the airport premises with instructions that under no circumstances are they to attempt to continue their journey by air?

[Logohu]

If services exist from Heathrow to A and to B, how on earth will you prevent or dissuade passengers travelling from A to B from connecting over LHR?

Well for a start how about making transfer passengers pay APD tax so they actually contribute something to the UK economy rather than just the bottom line of a few network airlines ?

At the moment APD is a much bigger burden on point to point passengers who actually want to come and spend their money in the UK, and on UK citizens who want to travel out of UK airports.

[DaveReidUK]

Well for a start how about making transfer passengers pay APD tax so they actually contribute something to the UK economy rather than just the bottom line of a few network airlines ?

That's an interesting one, which is in fact addressed (and dismissed, in the short-term at least) in the report:

"Apply (APD) to transfer passengers:

This proposal would change the rules surrounding Air Passenger Duty so that it applies to passengers connecting via UK airports without leaving the ‘airside’ area of the airport.

The Commission did not feel that the emerging analysis on the value of transfer traffic had made a case for this measure at this time."

[c52]

The argument for a hub includes these unspoken notions:

London businessmen will not do business in Timbuktoo if they have to change planes in Paris.

Non-London businessmen will do business in Timbuktoo if they have to change planes in Paris or London.

London businessmen will not do business in Timbuktoo if their flight is on a small plane from Stansted rather than on a large one full of transfer passengers from Heathrow,

[Skipness One Echo]

Well for a start how about making transfer passengers pay APD tax so they actually contribute something to the UK economy rather than just the bottom line of a few network airlines ?

Well existing levels of APD are in the opinion of many already damaging the UK economy, this proposal just makes this worse by putting BA at a further disadvantage against foreign competition.

Can people who sneer at transfer passengers please remember that a large % of LHR direct flights are not viable without them and that if they go a very large number of blue collar men and women in low paid ramp and hotel type jobs will be lost to the economy. Unlike flight crew, they have fewer options, and believe me when I say commuting across London to Boris International surely isn't one of them.

[Logohu]

Well existing levels of APD are in the opinion of many already damaging the UK economy, this proposal just makes this worse by putting BA at a further disadvantage against foreign competition.

Exactly ! In which case abolish APD altogether.

There is no doubt that LHR does need to be expanded, and IMO and many others it should have already been expanded years ago. However the fact that over 30% of passengers currently passing through LHR enjoy what amounts to an APD tax holiday, when the airport is claimed to be effectively full, doesn't do the pro-expansion lobbyists any favours.

[WHBM]

Having travelled on countless Heathrow flights in all directions, long haul to domestic, over the years, and therefore encountered countless fellow seatmates over this time, I am actually astounded at this figure of 37% for transfer traffic. In fact I cannot recall the last transfer pax I met on a flight, in or out, and that includes on many domestics which for some reason are regularly said to exist "primarily" for transfer traffic. More than half the passengers were from various UK points, and of overseas visitors just about the whole lot had been over to London & the South-East, which really puts the kosh on claims of Birmingham etc that they could take the traffic - I think many such visitors probably couldn't even spell Birmingham, let alone have any desire to take an air service to there.

[Aksai Oiler]

Actually I'm one of your Xfer pax, travelling between Spain, the US, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Israel over 40 times in the last year, and I know of plenty others, so I'm afraid we are not so invisible

[PAXboy]

I suggest the APD discussion is wide of the mark - until we know if Txfer pax pay this at FRA/CDG/AMS??

• if they DO, then it's absence here is bringing us Pax
• if they do not - we can charge it and lose the Pax