GATWICK

[Vokes55]

but understand that LGW's growth is driven by easyJet and Norwegian, both loco leisure. LHR serves a slightly different market in connecting UK business to the world

Of course, we all know that a 3-times weekly service from Heathrow to a secondary city in China is going to contribute far more to the economy than an extra 15-20 aircraft that easyJet and Norwegian could base at LGW with an extra runway

And if you think easyJet only serve the "loco leisure" market, you're a little behind the times.

[A320.b744]

Originally Posted by Vokes55

Of course, we all know that a 3-times weekly service from Heathrow to a secondary city in China is going to contribute far more to the economy than an extra 15-20 aircraft that easyJet and Norwegian could base at LGW with an extra runway

And if you think easyJet only serve the "loco leisure" market, you're a little behind the times.

In all fairness, easyJet still primarily serve the leisure market. Just look at their destination list - the vast majority are bucket and spade routes. Yes there has been a pivot towards serving the business market, but there's still a severe lack of business destinations served by easyJet - where's Bucharest, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Hannover, Oslo, Stockholm, Warsaw? And of those cities, three key business destinations (Frankfurt, Hannover and Warsaw) aren't served at all from Gatwick.

Heathrow expansion will allow the UK to be connected to new cities across the globe. If Gatwick was expanded, yes you may get an extra 15-20 easyJet and Norwegian aircraft, but they'll serve the same old destinations that already have London connections. The UK economy needs new flights to South America and Asia that will attract inbound investment, not more flights to Alicante that predominantly benefit the Spanish economy.

[Skipness One Echo]

Of course, we all know that a 3-times weekly service from Heathrow to a secondary city in China is going to contribute far more to the economy than an extra 15-20 aircraft that easyJet and Norwegian could base at LGW with an extra runway

You do know that when LHR gets the third runway easyJet will be shifting a load of Gatwick capacity round the M25 to take advantage of the fact? The reason Your London Airport Gatwick fought so very hard against LHR expansion was to prevent losing traction with EZY? You knew that, right?
easyJet are a leisure airline who serve business routes and traffic just like Ryanair, but not a business focus like a legacy. Mind you they're the same as BA short haul so enough said....

[bcn_boy]

You all seem to have bought into the lhr propaganda that they are the sole airport for business. Expanding lgw will provide the competition the uk needs to keep airlines prices down. EasyJet will not be able to offer the same low fares from lhr as it will along with other airlines, have to foot the bill for that extra lhr runway along with the taxpayer. The bill is a lot lower for expanding lgw and no cost to the taxpayer.

[j636]

You all seem to have bought into the lhr propaganda that they are the sole airport for business. Expanding lgw will provide the competition the uk needs to keep airlines prices down. EasyJet will not be able to offer the same low fares from lhr as it will along with other airlines, have to foot the bill for that extra lhr runway along with the taxpayer. The bill is a lot lower for expanding lgw and no cost to the taxpayer.

Easyjet want want to charge low fares at LHR, they will be looking to high yielding passengers. Just like DY and FR will.

[Vokes55]

Originally Posted by A320.b744

The UK economy needs new flights to South America and Asia that will attract inbound investment, not more flights to Alicante that predominantly benefit the Spanish economy.

You mean like Chengdu? Or Lima?

Even if we are going to go down the line of easyJet being solely 'loco leisure', the tourist receipts from additional links by easyJet and other low cost carriers are going to provide far more income to the economy than a 3-weekly flight to China - which generally serves as a link home for Chinese tourists in the UK, aside from anything else.

Any major business links will exist regardless of slot constraints. If low cost carriers can base an additional 30-40 aircraft (or 100 if you want to believe Norwegian's CEO - I personally don't) in Gatwick, and flood the market with cheap seats, there will be an enormous benefit to the economy. Tourism accounts for 10% of UK GDP, and is one industry that cannot be conducted over a conference call.

[Skipness One Echo]

You all seem to have bought into the lhr propaganda that they are the sole airport for business. Expanding lgw will provide the competition the uk needs to keep airlines prices down. EasyJet will not be able to offer the same low fares from lhr as it will along with other airlines, have to foot the bill for that extra lhr runway along with the taxpayer. The bill is a lot lower for expanding lgw and no cost to the taxpayer.

I support expanding Gatwick, why are you conflating this with my support for expansion at LHR? Most traffic at LHR is leisure, however yields are higher as is the proportion of business travel. No credible person is suggesting LGW does not have a good % of business travellers, what LGW does not have is many options for them to access global markets. They have TK and EK but lost QR and EY. They have Air Transat, Westjet and Rouge but no Air Canada mainline, most noticeably for an airport of it's size, no KLM, Lufthansa (they keep trying and failing), no Air France. Virgin have their leisure focussed routes at Gatters and their business friendly higher yield at LHR. BA almost has a different business model at LGW, long haul remains leisure focused, something that LGW is brilliant at. So I agree, expand Gatwick, but do so on it's own merits as above and not like GIP tried to do, pretending it would in any way become like LHR if LHR was constrained. That's simply not backed up by the behaviour of the market.

The bill is a lot lower for expanding lgw and no cost to the taxpayer.

Network Rail might disagree....
The bill is a lot lower but the cost benefit analysis favours LHR, the airport the airlines want to fly from. If Gatwick was the new Heathrow, Qatar, Etihad and the US carriers would be all over it, instead it's Norwegian, the successor to Laker, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[bcn_boy]

Simply expand Gatwick and let that solve the problem in the south east. No need for an extra runway at Heathrow. Why have flights to Murcia, Alicante, Mykonos, santorini and so on from Heathrow taking up slots that could be used for business routes connecting the uk to the world? You know the ones that we are apparently lacking that only a third runway could provide. Keep the leisure at Gatwick, which after all it is what it is good at as you say.

[Skipness One Echo]

Simply expand Gatwick and let that solve the problem in the south east. No need for an extra runway at Heathrow. Why have flights to Murcia, Alicante, Mykonos, santorini and so on from Heathrow taking up slots that could be used for business routes connecting the uk to the world? You know the ones that we are apparently lacking that only a third runway could provide. Keep the leisure at Gatwick, which after all it is what it is good at as you say.

It's not that simple.
The leisure routes you speak of are BA short haul at weekends when the A320 series fleet would otherwise be less busy on days when traveling on business drops. So for two days a week you could cram in a handful of long haul flights but that barely addresses the capacity issue at LHR. I agree expand LGW by all means, nothing is stopping the long haul airlines of the world using it today.
You think a second runway at LGW means our hub capacity issue will be fixed? no, because hub capacity is at LHR and that's almost maxed out. You're talking about point to point traffic, that's a similar but not identical issue and you should not mix the two together. LHR only has the connectivity is has because of the short haul, long haul balance, and that is in danger of withering. That's the danger that was identified and will be addressed by LHR expansion.

[Vokes55]

But London doesn't need 'hub capacity', passengers that spend two hours here before getting on another flight, contributing nothing to the economy. London needs capacity to bring people into the city, which is exactly what the majority of those using easyJet and Norwegian are.

If the argument for a 3rd runway at Heathrow was simply to allow BA to expand their 'hub', then it is solving absolutely none of the capacity problems that the South East has.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by Vokes55

But London doesn't need 'hub capacity', passengers that spend two hours here before getting on another flight, contributing nothing to the economy. London needs capacity to bring people into the city, which is exactly what the majority of those using easyJet and Norwegian are.

Yawn.

You might want to do some simple research on how a hub works.

Clue: If an airport has lots of flights on lots of routes (which is what you tell us, rightly, that London needs), then inevitably you are going to get lots of passengers who use the airport to connect from one flight to another because you can't fly direct between the points in question. Complaining that, on average, a third of the passengers arriving at a hub like LHR continue their journey by air ignores the fact that it's those pax that make many services viable that otherwise wouldn't be.

How are you proposing to change that ?

[Vokes55]

Originally Posted by DaveReidUK

Yawn.

You might want to do some simple research on how a hub works.

Clue: If an airport has lots of flights on lots of routes (which is what you tell us, rightly, that London needs), then inevitably you are going to get lots of passengers who use the airport to connect from one flight to another because you can't fly direct between the points in question. Complaining that, on average, a third of the passengers arriving at a hub like LHR continue their journey by air ignores the fact that it's those pax that make many services viable that otherwise wouldn't be.

How are you proposing to change that ?

Yawn.

Ignoring your embarrassing attempt to sound patronising...Low cost airlines have been responsible for opening point-to-point routes that wouldn't have even been dreamt about 15 years ago. And almost every passenger that steps onboard an easyJet or Ryanair flight bound for London, will be finishing their journey in London or the South East.

So you're proposing we increase London's 'hub' capacity, whereby 33% (using your figures) of the increased passenger numbers will not spend a single penny in London or the UK? That's an excellent, efficient use of additional capacity for the economy.

London doesn't need extra 'hub capacity'. It's one of the most important cities in the world for business, tourism and VFR traffic. There are zero long haul routes that BA operate that rely on connections from Europe in order to operate.

[Andy_S]

Originally Posted by Vokes55

So you're proposing we increase London's 'hub' capacity, whereby 33% (using your figures) of the increased passenger numbers will not spend a single penny in London or the UK? That's an excellent, efficient use of additional capacity for the economy.

But 67% will.........

[Vokes55]

Great, so let's build a third runway at Heathrow so that 67% of the additional capacity can contribute to the UK economy, rather than at Gatwick where 100% (or thereabouts) can. Added to the fact that a second runway at Gatwick would bring far more extra capacity than a third at Heathrow, which would inevitably come with restrictions.

[DaveReidUK]

Nobody is denying the importance of O&D traffic. Even at Heathrow, two-thirds of all passengers fall into that category.

But of the other third, very few are connecting between city pairs that would be remotely feasible for Ryanair, Easyjet, Norwegian, etc to serve direct.

So by all means dispute the synergy of hubs if you wish, but you will find few people in the industry who agree with you.

[davidjohnson6]

Could we move the "shall we put a new runway at Heathrow or Gatwick" discussion into a separate thread please and leave this thread for matters of a purely Gatwick nature ?
There is definitely a place for the discussion (especially as Govt green lights can still be reversed at this stage!) but this thread is probably not the place for it...

[Vokes55]

I'm not disputing the synergy of hubs, I'm disputing the importance of it in a part of the world which is so restricted in terms of runway (and airspace) capacity, serving one of the most important cities in the world.

Given that we aren't going to get another runway any time soon, the one we do get should be used to increase capacity into and out of London, not to increase the amount of people that spend two hours in the airport and only spend £4 on an overpriced sandwich in WHSmiths.

A new runway at Gatwick could double capacity overnight, an extra 40million per year. A third runway at Heathrow is going to increase capacity by 15-20million max, a third of which won't even enter the country. It's a no brainer.

[True Blue]

Many seem to forget that it suits a lot of people/organisations to keep an almost long-haul monopoly at Lhr. How many times have we been told that yields are higher at Lhr? That is because they can charge higher fares there. Keep Lgw from expanding and that cosy position can be maintained. So for the travel establishment, it is a no brainer, shut Lgw out. Sadly, our government fell for it. So every time a new carrier launches a route from Lgw, what is the first we hear? Lgw is only the waiting room until they can get a slot at Lhr. Why? Better yields. And even though we have been hearing that Lhr is full for the last 20 years, they keep finding new slots to take those waiting carriers from Lgw to Lhr, so Lgw never gets a chance to compete effectively in the long-haul market. Status quo maintained. And for as long as the main airport for long-haul is Lhr, fares will remain higher as a result and we will pay for it. WE are fed a constant load of dosh by that same establishment of the need for extra slots to develop new long-haul markets. I bet that if those same markets were considered as profitable and essential as we are told, they would have flights now. I really hope Norwegian are hughly successful and disrupt this cosy arrangement big time.

[Skipness One Echo]

. There are zero long haul routes that BA operate that rely on connections from Europe in order to operate.

Really? Not a single long haul frequency or route would be dropped if BA stopped interlining with Finnair, JAL and Iberia across Europe and parked the A320 fleet. Is that what you said or am I misunderstanding you? Given the sheer volume of international to international connections across Oneworld LHR I suspect you may me misguided. Some Spanish BA flights are almost majority Japanese at certain times of the day.

btw BA don't want a third runway, their business model is dependent on rinsing a semi-captive market. Competition would explode if capacity was increased to the proposed levels.
Also you say "double capacity at LGW" to aid p2p when there is considerable free capacity at LTN/STN/SEN for inbound leisure. You don't NEED to build a new runway anywhere quite yet for that market, regardless of what GIP might want.

[Vokes55]

Given the sheer volume of international to international connections across Oneworld LHR I suspect you may me misguided.

The majority of which is incredibly low yielding. I flew from OSL-LHR-HKG in Club World for £110 more than it would've been to take the same LHR-HKG flights originating in London in economy. BA do not rely on connections in the same way that KLM and Lufthansa do for the majority of their routes, hence why they were against a third runway - on top of what you said, they know they don't need that extra 'hub' capacity to remain profitable.

Also you say "double capacity at LGW" to aid p2p when there is considerable free capacity at LTN/STN/SEN for inbound leisure. You don't NEED to build a new runway anywhere quite yet for that market, regardless of what GIP might want.

Ignoring SEN, those two are reaching capacity, particularly for based aircraft. There is very little capacity left for peak time based slots/parking positions in the whole of the South East, hence why every time Ryanair or easyJet open a new base overseas, the first route to change is usually the reversing of the morning London route.

Besides, a new runway isn't just for now, it's for the future - as we know we're not getting another one any time soon