HEATHROW
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I can't speak for Edinburgh and Birmingham but the load factors Ex Manchester long haul are full.
This of course is unlike the situation at Heathrow where i admit they tend to be full in first but half empty in the back.
You could argue that there s/b financial penalties for flying half empty planes in / out of a slot limited airport!
It's presicely the sort of thing Davies should have looked.
Meanwhile it looks as though it's a dead duck anyway!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/avia...way-plans.html
This of course is unlike the situation at Heathrow where i admit they tend to be full in first but half empty in the back.
You could argue that there s/b financial penalties for flying half empty planes in / out of a slot limited airport!
It's presicely the sort of thing Davies should have looked.
Meanwhile it looks as though it's a dead duck anyway!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/avia...way-plans.html
Last edited by Bagso; 12th Dec 2015 at 08:52.
That's a bit below the ICAO 2014 global average of 79.8%, but hardly "half empty".
Gatwick's PLF is well over 80%, but of course that includes LCCs.
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That's true Dave but given its highly unlikely every flight runs at that level some flights will be very full but there will certainly be others less so.
Difficult to accommodate in a free market but still something that Davies should have considered where slots are at an absolute premium !
Difficult to accommodate in a free market but still something that Davies should have considered where slots are at an absolute premium !
There's been nothing new or insightful recently, we're going round in circles.
If Cameron is serious about increasing hub access he will choose LHR and screw over Zac, but not until after the mayoral elections which frankly, he's going to lose.
If he fudges yet again and pretends that LGW has anything to do with inbound trade and ub connectivity he screws over Osbourne.
However, as the vociferous nature of the anti-LHR expansion camp is self evident, and some of the genuine environmental concerns will be open to challenge then if they can nail them down and reluctantly approve LHR then so be it.
For all the sound and fury and billionaire smugness of Zac "getting the wink" from his old chum, Gatwick are getting increasingly vocal and aggressive and Heathrow are currently pressing ahead with contract negotiations regardless. Politics is a dirty business but either way, by the summer, we should finally see a decision for a third runway. Any nod to Gatwick would not be supported by Osbourne, Cameron's likely successor. And please, no one seriously thinks Boris will be PM and more than Corbyn.
If Cameron is serious about increasing hub access he will choose LHR and screw over Zac, but not until after the mayoral elections which frankly, he's going to lose.
If he fudges yet again and pretends that LGW has anything to do with inbound trade and ub connectivity he screws over Osbourne.
However, as the vociferous nature of the anti-LHR expansion camp is self evident, and some of the genuine environmental concerns will be open to challenge then if they can nail them down and reluctantly approve LHR then so be it.
For all the sound and fury and billionaire smugness of Zac "getting the wink" from his old chum, Gatwick are getting increasingly vocal and aggressive and Heathrow are currently pressing ahead with contract negotiations regardless. Politics is a dirty business but either way, by the summer, we should finally see a decision for a third runway. Any nod to Gatwick would not be supported by Osbourne, Cameron's likely successor. And please, no one seriously thinks Boris will be PM and more than Corbyn.
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You are not serious about a decision being made next summer are you? There will be no 3rd runway at Heathrow or second runway at Gatwick. I go back to the Roskill Commission of 1968 to decide where the third London Airport was to be situated. They came out with the old RAF airfield at Cublington, near Aylesbury and look at what has happened since. People can huff and puff as much as they like but can we get real here.
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there is serious opposition to increased air traffic due to environmental issues. Filtering people onto larger aircraft rather than having numerous smaller aircraft flying direct from the regionals is one answer to this.
Secondly, you need to take a closer look at those regional long-haul services. Have you checked up on them lately? Where are all these "smaller aircraft" you speak of? At MAN, around 32 long-haul departures will operate each day in Summer 2016. Only two of these are scheduled as narrow-body types [2 x UAL B752] - and they fly pretty full. All the other flights are programmed as widebodies and historic load factors are strong. Services are only sustainable at airports like MAN if they are profitable. No airline feels the need to be seen flying the flag there. I don't have the full long-haul schedules to hand for BHX, NCL, GLA and EDI but the same principle applies.
Now, consider the situation if the eco-extremist lobby were to succeed in getting long-haul flights from the UK capped. Do you think LHR would get the full quota? Well, think again. London and the SE has roughly one-third of the population; the rest of the UK has two-thirds. But L&SE has the vast majority of long-haul departures already. Are politicians outside London going to stand meekly by as regional airports are stripped of their relatively meagre share of economically vital long-haul links in favour of more concentrated LHR dominance? Or might LHR instead be forced to trim its phenomenal frequency of multiple-hourly departures to New York, for example? Those regional long-hauls are not "smaller aircraft", they are large aircraft just like those at LHR and their load factors are strong. All hypothetical at this point, but never assume that LHR will get all the cake if a cap on flights were to be introduced.
As I said, be very careful what you wish for.
You also have the chicken and egg situation whereby businesses may not want to invest in areas that do not have easy access
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Skipness - the lawyers will keep this in play for YEARS especially as the environmentalists can and will drag the European Courts into it - and they take at least two years to come to a decision
By next summer there will be approx 3 years before the next general election campaign kicks off at which point some politicians/parties will undoubedly campaign on a "no more runways" platform
In 2016/17 the politicos will be up to their necks in the EU referendum and the fallout from whatever the decision is
the biggest customer at LHR doesn't want to pay for it and there is no way you could sell this to the Treasury or the tax-payer
As compton points out this is just another re-run of every other attempt to expand LHR over the last 40 years - none have succeeded and these days the opponents are better organised, better funded and have more legal rights than they ever had in Roskill days
It's a dead dog
By next summer there will be approx 3 years before the next general election campaign kicks off at which point some politicians/parties will undoubedly campaign on a "no more runways" platform
In 2016/17 the politicos will be up to their necks in the EU referendum and the fallout from whatever the decision is
the biggest customer at LHR doesn't want to pay for it and there is no way you could sell this to the Treasury or the tax-payer
As compton points out this is just another re-run of every other attempt to expand LHR over the last 40 years - none have succeeded and these days the opponents are better organised, better funded and have more legal rights than they ever had in Roskill days
It's a dead dog
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The one thing which will kill R3 will be the voters of London next May. Both Mayoral candidates are dead against the proposal, and as such will campaign against it. When the results are in the Government will then turn round and say "its the will of the people" which we have to accept in a democracy (sic)
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But growth (t)here will come alongside growth in the south-east not instead of it.
So not ruling out allowing regional airports to make their own commercial case for expansion but even with that, still need LHR/LGW to expand.
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I see in yesterday's Sunday Times that BA has been selecting cancelling flights as it does not have enough aircraft to operate flights to fill all the slots that it does have following the return of the remedy slots from Virgin Red. By operating at least 80% of the scheduled services it gets to keep the slot.
I don't think that it is a new phenomenon and answers a question that I never got around to posting some time back - why does BA have gaps of around four weeks when certain flights are not operated resulting in a "lumpy" schedule?
Of course its not just BA that babysits slots, other airlines do it by using smaller aircraft. Does KLM really need 12 flights to/from AMS with some operated by F70s? (Its Skyteam partners well welcome some of them in the future.) It also ties in with the separate issue of frequency and the airline with the most flights on a route winning market share. UA has finally replaced its 757s with 767s to Newark (route operated 5x per day) whilst LH operates 12 narrow bodies a day to Frankfurt.
I've got a couple of questions someone may be able to answer.
If BA did operate its slots everyday would it have a significant effect on punctuality (of all airlines) at LHR?
Obviously it may not make sense to operate through the IATA traffic season where traffic is seasonal - BA only operates its second Vancouver flight from June - Sept (although it won't operate it at all next summer going to single daily A380 I understand) whilst AC operates routes such as Halifax daily at the height of the summer but only on selected days during shoulder months. Do the slots get re-allocated to other airlines in advance or does AC take care that it operates at least 80% of the time?
I don't think that it is a new phenomenon and answers a question that I never got around to posting some time back - why does BA have gaps of around four weeks when certain flights are not operated resulting in a "lumpy" schedule?
Of course its not just BA that babysits slots, other airlines do it by using smaller aircraft. Does KLM really need 12 flights to/from AMS with some operated by F70s? (Its Skyteam partners well welcome some of them in the future.) It also ties in with the separate issue of frequency and the airline with the most flights on a route winning market share. UA has finally replaced its 757s with 767s to Newark (route operated 5x per day) whilst LH operates 12 narrow bodies a day to Frankfurt.
I've got a couple of questions someone may be able to answer.
If BA did operate its slots everyday would it have a significant effect on punctuality (of all airlines) at LHR?
Obviously it may not make sense to operate through the IATA traffic season where traffic is seasonal - BA only operates its second Vancouver flight from June - Sept (although it won't operate it at all next summer going to single daily A380 I understand) whilst AC operates routes such as Halifax daily at the height of the summer but only on selected days during shoulder months. Do the slots get re-allocated to other airlines in advance or does AC take care that it operates at least 80% of the time?
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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.
I wonder if there would be a majority in the Commons for the runway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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
Last edited by Fairdealfrank; 21st Dec 2015 at 21:36.
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Quote:
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!
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!
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Heathrow question at Prime Ministers questions (PMQs)
Tanya Mathias MP (Con, Twickenham) asked a question about pollution (the particular pollution she is actually referring to is Putney High Street although it remains unmentioned) and disingenously links it to Heathrow at PMQs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO4F4uQ9k8E
Please note plenty of groans from all over the House, glum faces among her colleagues, and not a single loud chorus of "hear hear".
So where are all these millions of alleged anti-Heathrow expansion MPs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO4F4uQ9k8E
Please note plenty of groans from all over the House, glum faces among her colleagues, and not a single loud chorus of "hear hear".
So where are all these millions of alleged anti-Heathrow expansion MPs?