Colegate I agree, but looking the other way down the Telescope, Stansted is crucial to Ryanair. They don’t have another option for this scale of access to the London market. It is in the interests of both to reach an agreement. I understand that Ryanair are just as keen to meet with the potential bidders.

WHBMTrue, but if they did know that they were different markets, it would mean someone in govt understood the airline industry - and that would never do. :hmm:

Can't see Wizz moving out of LTN. Wizz tried out Stansted a few years ago and got its fingers burnt. LTN is now firmly established as a gateway airport to Eastern Europe with Adria and Blue-Air all jumping on the Wizz bandwagon.

Also I would not think they would like operating out of Ryanair's home base.

In 2 or 3 years Luton will have increased its capacity by 80%. It might be STN that needs to worry as LTN looks to the east to fill its expanded airport.

As has been mentioned many times in the STN vs LTN debate the one factor that will always be an issue for STN is location, location, location!

To those who think LTN's exec traffic will suddenly be lured to Essex.....Hmm, why hasn't this already happened then!? STN already has plenty of parking space North side & several FBO's who will happily oblige! A possible (but unlikely) reduction in landing fees isn't going to make much difference to a Gulfstream owner who wants to be in the West End pronto after landing!

Both Signature and Ocean Sky at LTN are making big investments in new facilities and will want to make sure they get some return in the future!

I think the weakest selling point for Stansted is the poor ground transport to and from London. Below is an illustration I've made showing only travel times for all London airport to Marble Arch departing the airport around 9 am. As you can see I have looked at three modes of transport: rail/underground/DLR, taxi/car and coach/bus. The distances shown are measured linear distances, not actual distances driven.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23931688/Il..._transport.jpg

Sources for these travel times are Transport for London Journey Planner and TomTom Route Planner. For Southend Airport I had to use also the National Rail Enquiries and First Essex websites (Southend Airport is the only London airport that is not included in the Transport for London Journey Planner).

Luton's weak link is the 5 minute shuttle bus between the station and the terminal which can take 15 minutes if you have just missed a bus. Once at the station it has non stop trains to and from London which take as little as 20 minutes as well as the regular First Capital Connect and Southern train services. Also it serves a large number of stations directly both north and south of the Thames making it an ideal airport for many passengers.

The Stansted Express is fine except I would not call it an express service which makes it seem that Stansted is futher out from London than it really is.

I would say the soft belly of LTN is the public transport to and from the airport. At my home airport, OSL, the distance from the airport to the city centre is exactly the same as from LTN to Marble Arch. If you are traveling with the Airport Express train from OSL to the National Theatre it takes only 27 minutes - and that is less than one third of what the travel time is from LTN.

So are we assuming that the population of London and all those that fly from there reside under Marble Arch? From my home in London (which is actually south of the river) both Stansted and Gatwick take the same time to drive, despite Stansted being further in distance. Luton is fine by train but a bloody pain in the ar$€ to treck across central London by car.

Agreed that the Stansted Express is slow, I remember when the new terminal opened in 1991 it had a journey time of just 41 minutes with the stop at Tottenham Hale so what happened? Plus it's really expensive for what it is.

Stansted has a good catchment area which undoubtedly overlaps with that of Luton and Gatwick. However we all know that the 'customer' will go with which ever airline offers the best fare and from which ever airport that happens to be as a majority.

Good luck to Stansted and I really do hope that the sale brings with it a wave of new (and maybe some old) airlines at what is a fantastic and user friendly facility to use.

A strong point of Luton which is often missed is how much better for the Midlands it is than Stansted.

Bearing in mind lots of the thinner eastern routes will not all support BHX / EMA or even MAN and so travelling to London is a must - Luton is 40 minutes to an hour closer to Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester etc.

Stansted holds the advantage for Norwich, Peterborough, Cambridge, much smaller cities.

Luton also has plentiful free parking in the town :)

There are not many places in London that take that long as the Thameslink rail service has 5 principle railway stations in the heart of London. Also St Pancras connects with 6 underground lines and Blackfriars a further 2.

Unfortunately, as was only to be expected, this had degenerated into a Luton V Stansted debate. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Southend arrive at the party!

I'm not even tempted.....

Nothing much wrong with Stansted. At the end of the day Stansted has the greatest potential of all London airports to expand as it has the space to grow.

Southend has the most to lose as it does not have any fallback if easyjet shifts its 3 aircraft. Can't see them doing that anytime soon but then I didn't see them shifting capacity from Stansted to Southend either.

Every London airport is a pain in some way or another. For me, travelling from a regional airport is always less stressful andobviously less time consuming.

LTN is a nightmare if you want to get into London by public transport, and if you have to do it regularly then forget it. I used ot hate standing outside waiting in the freezing cold for the shuttle bus to slowly chug around and take me to the station and again wait in the freezin cold for an old train to take me into London with the terrifying rattling windows every time a train wizzed past on the opposite side of the tracks. Only very price sensitive people will put up with the increased stress associated with LTN and to a lesser extent STN (maybe even SEN & LGW) to get to and from London - and that has been their success - LCC and bucket&spade.

If you can afford it, you will fly into LHR or LCY as a number one preference.

It is only Heathrow that has decent trains. All the other airports use commuter stock including Gatwick which is served by the very same train that you hate.

I have tried LGW by train a couple of times a long time ago, although I don't seem to remember sh**ing my pants every time a train went by on the other line on that one.

Ramp Rat mentioned Flybe earlier and they were one of my first thoughts - if you look at their network from LGW it is an excellent fit for STN.

Channel Islands aside, which I can't really see moving, none of the other routes are served from STN and BE do in fact have competition from EZY at LGW on a few of them (ABZ, IOM, INV). Add in the arrival of EI on the BHD route (a destination STN has recently lost) and LGW's recent dislike of smaller aircraft it becomes a nice rumour.

But you have to spend an hour on the Piccadilly Line or get burnt in the pocket for using the LHR Express!

I'd say rail services to the London airports are satisfactory, but nothing more than that. Considering the locations, its probably only as good as it can be.

A better option between Heathrow Express and the tube is Heathrow connect, every half an hour, 25 minute journey to Paddington for 9.10 single on modern trains.

That's because there is no highspeed trains between Gatwick and London as it is a commuter line while north of London there is East Midland trains to Nottingham and Sheffield which passes Luton.

Ryanair could buy a stake in STN
 

Ryanair have announced that they are prepared to be a stakeholder if required.

Low-cost carrier Ryanair in talks about taking a stake in Stansted airport - Business News - Business - The Independent

hmmmm

Isn't this all really just part of a long and drawn out plan to get control of an important London gateway ?

The way this is heading the competition authorities could look pretty foolish if their not careful.

They can kiss goodbye to Easyjet if that happens,

Over 70% of seat capacity at STN comes from Ryanair. Ryanair is very much a monopsonist - a bit like the NHS being the major purchaser of medical services from doctors in the UK.

Nobody would invest in STN without getting some form of long term commitment from Ryanair such that Ryanair suffers if MOL changes his strategy away from STN in the future

LTN and DJ,

Spot on....and with O'Toole (Ex Ryanair Exec) now handily installed as Group CCO at Manchester Group then perhaps the deal has already been done and everyone else is wasting their time.....

So which London airport could Ryanair go to? Stansted is stuck with Ryanair and Ryanair is stuck at Stansted.

Ryanair can't shift everything out of STN but they can make a sizeable dent. How much capacity will there be at LTN once all the building work is complete ? Can some Ws be done at Gatwick for the off peak periods ?

May not be rational for FR to move aircraft from a short term profit perspective, but they have a track record of doing so at other bases when they have a point to make.

If the bidders for STN are heavily financed by debt they will not be able to afford to take long term views in the first few years. Interest costs will be fixed but revenues variable against passenger numbers.

Conversely whoever buys STN should be doing their utmost to diversify their airline customer base and reduce reliance on FR long term, while signalling FR won't have authority over STN's board of directors to reassure other airlines. Perhaps some clause limiting the voting rights of FR's shares might help or the use of non voting preference shares rather than ordinary shares ?

Well......Ryanair is stuck with STN I agree.......but is STN really stuck with Ryanair...?

Sooner or later airports must wake up to the fact that it is they own their catchment and not the airline and that it is their opportunity to serve it with a flying programme that meets the market requirement.

The new owners should double Ryanairs charges.......if they pay great....if they don't.....bye bye Ryanair....!!....as LTN says, they have no where else to go.....

Generally speaking, airlines will not come to STN whilst Ryanair remain .........and if they become stakeholders, well, ....nothing more would stifle competition more in my book...!!

Let's hope there are bidders out there with a bit of guts and determination and see the vision of what STN could become......

Ryanair cannot go anywhere else in the LON area with such scale.
Any potential buyer will have to swallow this, if they demand 'normal' charges then RYR will start cutting routes to move airframes across Europe or base them in Europe and run the routes back to STN.
Either way unless the new owner has to have deep pockets, they are not going to attract new business whilst RYR are dominating.

An aggressive Gatwick and Luton and Southend hungry for more business, it's going to need a revolutionary business plan to move things forward for STN.

"If you are traveling with the Airport Express train from OSL to the National Theatre it takes only 27 minutes -"

and it doesn't cost you a new mortgage

A few years back I was with a guy who INSISTED on taking a taxi from OSL to central Oslo as "only Europeans use public transport". The driver had to be told three times that we were serious and then watching the meter just go round and round so fast you could hardly read it was a lot of fun as I wasn't paying

We went back on the train .....................................

But they do accept credit cards ;)

It true TSR2, but I have heard even more hair rising stories about taxi rides - people arriving with Ryanair at Sandefjord Airport, Torp (Oslo Torp in Ryanair language). They just wanted a taxi in to town for a business meeting (obviously Oslo, not Sandefjord) and they ended up with 72 miles/1 hour 28 minutes long ride, late arrival to the meeting and an empty credit card.

That's true.

Bring back Fornebu, would have been ideal for low-cost carriers. Might have been a good route from Stansted !

Ryanair couldn't care less about not having anywhere else to go...if the new owners of STN would raise charges they will just move capacity to othe EU airports. Ryanair don't think on a local scale they think european wide, their assets go wherever the money can be made most; which means the right mix of low landing fees, good catchment area, marketing support bla bla bla.

I'm sure the new owners will want to work with Ryanair not against, but time will tell!

RE: RyanAir
 

Well there's the huge catchment area of London and the SE at stake which is surely their biggest market with 40 odd aircraft based at Stansted. I think you'll find that Stansted is what made RyanAir what it is today and that works in reverse too of course.

Blimey,things move fast around here.No sooner is the sale announced and swissport middle managers are being canvassed to rebuild the mainline operation on the strength of the aquisition of a new contract.

new owners
 

I hope the reports of the MAG being the front runner for stansted turn out to be wrong. Stansted needs an owner that will invest heavily after years of BAA papering over the cracks and MAG would inevitably just be another owner borrowing to buy and muddling along til inevitable sale again??:cool:

Senflyer - what are the major items of investment that you think Stansted needs ?

IMHO The new owners need to re-invent STN. It needs to take on LHR and LGW. Ideally finding a way to bring Flag Carriers/Asia/TransAtlantic to the airport using LCC's as part of the onward travel. In order to do that the existing infrastructure needs reorganising to take on transit pax, plus provide business and first class facilities . But I suspect that a new terminal would be a better solution for that and STN should push for the additional runway instead of LHR too. :cool:

Stansted will not be able to re-invent itself with Ryanair there as they hold all the cards