Yes

It's very short!

Redbull Runway
 

Do they still have the red bull runway on the other side?
May be they should start to use that and boat the pax over!!
Have then rebulit the Swiss a/c over there yet?

The redbull airstrip is tiny maybe only a few hundred metres in length. The Swiss RJ is hiding inside the temporary hanger being repaired whilst the Cityjet RJ is over by the jet centre. When did the BA jet burst a tyre??

Just for the record, but with the addition of flights to VIE, TXL and SXB, LCY has now reached its legal peak capacity of 80.000 annual movements. So no further expansion possible until the airport's licence is amended.


EDIT: Sorry, just saw that it had already been reported

have they applied for it to be ammended?

FC

Yes. 2 months ago.

http://www.lcacc.org/future/index.htm#interim

Wonder if there will be much uptake for the travelodge, it is just down the road....

In other news, Budapest has been added to the list of surveyed future destinations. As a matter of fact, MALEV is one of the few Fokker 70 operators.

The typical LCY passenger from the finance world is not going to hang around for 30 minutes for a bus instead of taking a taxi to their hotel.

Actually for business visitors to Canary Wharf I recommend they stay in one of the mainstream hotels around Piccadilly in the West End, and go to/fro on the Jubilee Line from Green Park. It doesn't take notably longer than a cab from the nearer hotels to the office, and the difference in what you can do in the evening is of course stupendous.

Hotels
 

Canary Wharf isnt bad for night life. The Marriot and the 4-seasons there are pretty good.

Well, yes, but if somebody arrives at LCY and their travel dept. have booked them into either of
than they are going to be a bit tight on cab fares as well, are they not? Same goes for contactors - a quid saved is a quid earned.
You must be joking. They're excellent places to stay, I give you that, and there is a multiplex next to the Marriott, but otherwise Canary Wharf / Dockland is a glorified business park with an (admittedly rather acceptable) mall attached to it. The West End on the other hand is full of pubs, restaurants, theatres, people (!!), and beats Docklands hands down for night life.
Tom

With SAS announcing they are going to dispose of their Q400s following the well-publicised incidents, wonder what impact this will have on LCY.

The SAS flight to Copenhagen will presumably stick long-term with the leased 146 they have been using temporarily.

More particularly those carriers who thought moving on to the Q400 is the way to go are probably rethinking their options. Luxair have just done so. Austrian, starting this weekend with F70s, were probably thinking of doing so as well if the new service works out, the F70s being a bit long in the tooth now. What else is available for them ?

WHBM

I wouldn't be so quick to rule the Q400 out of the game! SAS getting rid of theirs, along with the landing gear problems, might well mean a few examples becoming available at competitive prices; and as long as the certification remains intact, then I think that they'll be in and out of LCY for a while to come.

As far as alternatives, well there's the E-135 (admittedly a bit pricey, as Luxair have been finding out), 146s and RJs, new ATRs, and probably others.

I'm looking forward to the F70s coming in, it should be good sport to watch!

CC

Q400's
 

Luxiars Q400 is brand spankign new so should be ok? Perhaps a good time to be an Embraer sales person - 170 and later the 190?

But despite the trials a while ago (in fact quite a while ago) neither the E170 or the E190 (or, come to that, the A318) seem to have made any further progress in being authorised into London City. It seems the new stands will open next year for just the old stalwarts.

Fokker 70 @ LCY today
 

Hello all,

First post - so please be gentle...

Witness the return of the F70 to LCY today. I was intrigued, given the naysayers on here, to see how it performed from a layman's perspective.

It seemed to execute a pretty flawless landing, and 10 mins early too. Only idle reverse thrust appeared to be used. The F70 looked great with the pale blue belly and did not appear to use any more of the runway than the 146s.

I was surprised to see how big it looked next to the 146s. It looked at least as big even though it typically seats 20 less pax.

Come T/O time, it rotated at around the same point as the 146 that preceded it and seemed to be equally quiet, which was quite impressive since Vienna is one of the furthest destinations served from LCY. The AOA and climb rate seemed much higher than the 146 and was probably up there with the bizjets.

All in all, quite impressive. I may well have to take a test ride...

On the subject of the A318 steep approach certification, it does have this but I hear that until the new stands are open then there is not the room to park it.

http://www.eads.net/1024/en/pressdb/pressdb/lebourget/20070620_airbus_a318_steep_approach.html

Any views?

That would be a fine thing! As it is, LCY operates over-capacity, in terms of both aircraft movements and passenger facilities. Admittedly, part of the capacity problem is lack of stands, but only part of the problem.

I just hope that the airport operator doesn't try to sell the airport over-capacity again as soon as the work is complete.

CC

I assume (as the link doesn't work) that EADS say they have authority for the A318, but the London City definitive page on their own website about types which are certified certainly doesn't.

I am probably one of the few who remembers the Air France F70 operating to Paris in the 1990s. This was indeed a noisy little thing, they did use reverse thrust, and when they spooled up against the brakes on a Runway 10 departure you could hear it right up by the A13. Honestly, because I did so. Of course in those days there were far fewer movements and nobody really noticed. Looks like Austrian have done a bit of work on how to be quieter. Have they been practicing over at Gloucester ?

From the Luxair website:

Nothing terribly exiting as it is only an extension of the LUX route, but nevertheless

Maybe a move to fill the much larger Q400 in the light of heavy competition by VLM on the LUX.


Also in the City Star thread continuing rumours about an announcement of ABZ-LCY.

Slot filings at German airports for summer 08 have now been released.

Cityflyer have applied for slots for LCY-DUS.

Both Cityjet and Air France have now applid for LCY-FRA, obviously in a move to improve chances to get slots allocated at FRA.

I thought CityJet was Air France :confused:

Well, they hold their own AOC, so both companies obviously have filed slot requests at FRA for identical times. Whoever gets the slots first will be the official carriers on the route, me thinks.

AF are suspending LCY-MAD according to http://airlineroute.*************/ from 24th november.

Cityflyer are reportedly trying to get their mits on two RJ85's for use to MAD & an Italian destination. Due to the runway limitations at LCY, the RJ100 is apparently too large for the route

WNC

BA Cityflyer have actually done the deal on these RJ85s :

"BA CityFlyer announced the acquisition of two Avro RJ85 regional jets for Spring 2008. The airline has signed leases for the two aircraft with BAE Systems Regional Aircraft, to replace the two oldest RJ100s in the BA CityFlyer fleet of 10 aircraft. The new, lighter aircraft will be able to carry more passengers on longer routes from London City Airport."

http://www.bashares.com/phoenix.zhtm...9&p=IROL-index

E195 & Guernsey
 

Looks like GCI will get the E195 afterall on the Gatwick from Feb onwards. Happy days.

Very well, but what has this to do with London City Airport ?

Due to the fuel load required to VIE our flights out of LCY have a booking limit well below the max seating capacity (max seating has been reduced to 75 to increase legroom down from an original 80). Today's morning flight had a whopping 67 but we probably couldn't do that in summer. Minimum block fuel to VIE with an alternate is about 6t.

We don't train at Gloucester. Some crews got steep approach training at Zeltweg AB (LOXZ) and most get their training on the line. Currently it's instructors only. We also operate to Altenrhein-St.Gallen (LSZR) which has a runway of almost the same size with a 4 degree ILS that is very slightly offset and has a minimum of 210ft RA. The ramp there is even smaller but there's no other airline traffic; it has more of the "Swiss pasture" feeling with sheep grazing on the safety strips.

The Fokker 70 has a dedicated "steep approach" button that will reprogram the flight guidance as well as GPWS and disable autoland :) Main gear strut pressure is also reduced.

Landing mass restrictions for dry/wet are not limiting for the VIE flight. More than idle reverse would only be required for slippery runway or in case of abnormal ops.

BTW, anyone care to vent their feelings about the "touchdown zone compliance monitoring".

I've heard that there is a permenant film crew hidden in a fake letter box filming all aircraft landing. Anyone floating past he TD end markers by even 1m are reported to Ken Livingstone the Mayor of London and are then fined!

PS. saw one of your landings in a strong crosswind with gust and it was nicely done, I was a bit nervous beforehand to say the least! Nice flying!

To whoever manages the Passenger Information System at LCY :

Went over there last night to meet a business colleague arriving on the 1910 arrival from Dublin.

Teletext and LCY website both said it was arriving 20 minutes early at 1850. Surprising, as they had got away from Dublin 5 minutes late, so went to some effort to get over there earlier than expected. Info screens in terminal also said it was "Expected 1850".

Well I should have known better than expecting a 55-minute transit from Dublin landing into LCY in the evening rush, shouldn't I ? 1850 came and went. So did 1900, 1910 and 1920. Other landings were put up. It was still "Expected 1850" 30 minutes after the event.

Then suddenly it was "landed 1915". Followed just a few minutes later by being completely cleared from the board, well before the pax had emerged.

Who updates this ? The handling agent or airport staff ? I have complained before about clearing relevant data far too soon while leaving all the rest of the arrivals for the whole day on there for hours ahead. Come on folks, you can do better than this.

Maybe we can have a new message "Expected to be heading between ALKIN and SPEAR going in the wrong direction at 1850".

I was on a VLM flight also due to arrive about 18.50 last night, and already delayed an hour due to ATC restrictions, and arriving in the London area we were put in a hold for about 30 mins as the captain told us LCY was closed due to a 'fire alert'. I guess there was a bit of confusion as to which flight was arriving when around that time as they sorted the arrivals out so that might explain the problems with the arrivals board, had to wait a few minutes for a stand to become available as well, but that seems to be usual for that time of the evening.

Third carrier on AMS-LCY. Particularly VLM will be delighted....


So no LCY-DUS for the time being.

AMS LCY:
VLM 9 * a day
KLM 7 * a day

and now BA 4* a day with the RJ..... :eek:

Talk about a trunk route.....

Surprised to see that VLM is down to 9 flights. Weren't they doing 12-14 flights a day a while ago with KLM only offering 5 or 6? Seems as if KLM is catching up after they were initially slaughtered by VLM on the route.


All in all, I am under the impression as if VLM is facing hard times on their LCY routes.

BRU and to some extent ANR will suffer from the Eurostar, AMS is under pressure because of KLM and now BA. MAN has been reduced over the past years mainly due to the railways, LPL has disappeared completely. JER is only a skeleton service.

Regarding BA what's being cut as they still only have 10 aircraft? Surely more than just Malpensa. Is Warsaw really a London City route with high yield business traffic?

From what I gather, BACF has currently only 8 aircraft allocated, with two each overnighting at LCY, EDI and GLA plus one each at FRA and MAD.
MAD and BCN probably will be served with one of the new Avro RJ85s. I guess NCE will simply replace MXP as an off-peak flight. LCY-AMS probably can be done by one aircraft (probably AMS-based), and there is sufficient off-peak capacity to squeeze in WAW.
This would mean 9 aircaft allocated next summer plus one spare without the need to cut anything back.

The BA mainline service to Warsaw is being moved from Heathrow to Gatwick at the same time. Sounds mad to me too, but there should be sufficient business pax hacked off by this to justify an LCY service provided the times are appropriate. If the experience of the Milan route, doing it as an off-peak "filler" only, is any indication, however, it may backfire.

Yes, BA have been beaten by Air One operating at "proper" business times (and to a proper business airport in Milan).

Regarding VLM, it is right they seem to be stagnating at LCY and cutting off-peak flights on all routes - even their flagship Rotterdam operation has nothing between 11am and 4pm now.

And yet I read in the latest AMS network newsletter:
That's a lot of capacity on AMS!

Virginblue - you seem to be right about 8 BA aircraft being allocated (but they don't fly MUC, so by my count it's 2 overnighting in EDI, 2 in GLA, 2 in LCY, 1 in MAD and 1 in ZRH) but if they go to 9 allocated aircraft they're cutting their standby cover in half - and they haven't exactly been immune to tech delays so far, have they?

I mixed up MUC and MAD, of course.

I also understand that ZRH will be night-stopper from the summer. So it will be 2 at GLA and EDI each and one each at MAD, ZRH, FRA and LCY (and presumably AMS). Tight, of course, but on the other hand with a fleet of just ten aircraft two spare aircraft will seriously hurt your earnings.

By the way, where do they keep the spare aircraft if they are not undergoing maintenance?

I thought LCY had reached its quota of flights? So how can BA fit in such a huge expansion?

Hmm, good question.

Aren't movement caps usually calculated per flight season? If so, there may be some movements left for the summer season. Or they have bought some slots from, hmmm, Euromanx?