Agree. I see no improvement for these negotiated rerouting. It's extending total flight time into City.
Time to switch to other services from other airports. Baggage handling at City is becoming too slow and the reno works now mean pax picked up by bus on ramp for H&S reasons. I feel City is going backwards very fast. Certainly not justifiable to spend extra on a ticket out of City for this sort of mediocre services. Not happy!

There are winners and losers with the LAMP procedures. I guess it's down to what is better overall. Hard data of emissions etc on all routes (in all directions, both inbound and outbound) pre- and post-LAMP implementation is required before any meaningful overall evaluation could be made.
Despite the obviously longer routings noted on previous posts does anyone know flight punctuality times (compared with scheduled times) on these routes?

Do the renovation works to West pier really mean pax are bussed or is it just because occasionally international flights are allocated domestic stand (or vice versa) due to stand availability/capacity issues?
In any case the works to increase pax comfort at departure lounge/gates should be complete soon.

Don't know about baggage handling but suspect the demographic of people using the airport has shifted slightly with more checked-in luggage (rather than travellers with carry-on only).

A couple of arguments there to support why further expansion is required in order to maintain/improve service to meet increasing demand. Of course there are other issues to consider...speaking of which, does anyone know when the outcome of public inquiry will be known? (I suspect, as usual, that it comes down to politics, mayoral elections, etc, etc.)

@good egg - re baggage,it's not that pax are checking luggage. It's because gate staff are insisting on tagging cabin acceptable wheelie luggage,for pax to dump at a/c steps when boarding.

Same carry-on luggage is stuffed in the hold. On arrival the hand carry-on luggage used to be left for pax to pick up at base of steps.

However, now this doesn't happen anymore. All luggage goes onto the belt, leaving hand luggage only pax shuffling around at a belt for 30 mins whilst handlers shunt luggage around.

It's a bloody ridiculous service level when vast majority of pax flowing through City are traveling light with cabin compliant carry-on baggage.

The bus shuttle is a new added delay to pax disembarking.

City is definitely going backwards. Pax flowing through City want fast in-and-out, traveling light majority of time.

The new approach routes are adding to flight time durations, it's another step backwards. Gone are the days you can approach heading south right turn over Lakeside for ILS establish. It's nuts now with the sight seeing routing around the Essex coastline.

It's always been a PITA in ATC terms, when it opened you had Brymon Dash 7s avoiding hot air balloons outside controlled airspace until someone figured that might er....go amiss shall we say? What's the main point? It's becoming a joke but the world is full of airports in close vicinity which get by way better than this.

It was never envisioned or intended to be as busy as it is now, we are doing that British thing of putting a pint into a half pint glass and wondering why the table is wet. The other thing that kills time now is what feels like LHR holding times waiting to backtrack Runway 27 at peak times to depart.

Really? The average time from start approved to airborne on RW27 is 12-13mins. Given the start takes around 4mins (from approval to requesting taxi) then you're talking about 8-9mins of taxi until airborne.
Granted that's an average, less in quiet periods, more in busy periods, but I think the 95th percentile of all start to airborne on RW27 is around 15mins. I don't imagine LHR comes close to that.

Perception of "delay" is an interesting subject, esp. when considered alongside On Time Performance.

@WHBM #1843, that routing actually looks like the BEE got a shortcut over the standard point merge too, it should go further east before coming back again.

I just wonder what the "better overall" aspect is of this morning's BAW2 arrival from New York.

Another sightseeing trip to show the French coast cliffs.

Quicker by bus
 

Pity the passengers on this morning's ABZ LCY. 1hr 50 minutes flight time, affording passengers stunning views of every country in the UK and who knows - even France too! Considering LHR can be done in just over an hour people will be leaving LCY in droves if these crazy routings don't change.

Might be quicker to land at Southend and catch the train into London!

Although, according to the arrivals board it landed 8mins before it was scheduled to.

Still landed 28mins earlier than scheduled though

Decided to bite the bullet. I can't be dealing with LCY reroute entry to the zone plus the fiasco on stand with carry on baggage. A good few chaps at our company have switched to using Gatwick over recent weeks. Cost savings plus no farting about with sightseeing long finals that are now common place at LCY.

NEW OWNERS
 

Have the new owners been announced yet ?... if so, any news about what they are going to do with the airport?

"Still landed 28mins earlier than scheduled though"


Which is essentially meaningless for those flights unfortunate enough to be sent off to the hinterland "remote" stands, waiting to be backed into position, waiting for the transporting bus to arrive and fill, waiting for every other plane to disembark before the bus can pass on its way to the baggage hall.
I have to agree; LCY has turned into an extremely unpleasant option these days.

AZ increase LIN frequency
 

Don't think this news has recently been posted.

AZ have increased frequency on there LIN service, with flights now operating up to 5 x daily.

AZ225 LCY 06:30 LIN 09:30 E90 x7
AZ217 LCY 09:00 LIN 11:55 E90 x67
AZ215 LCY 11:25 LIN 14:20 E90 x7
AZ221 LCY 16:20 LIN 19:15 E90 x67
AZ219 LCY 19:45 LIN 22:40 E90 x6

AZ218 LIN 07:35 LCY 08:30 E90 x67
AZ216 LIN 10:00 LCY 10:55 E90 x7
AZ222 LIN 14:55 LCY 15:50 E90 x67
AZ220 LIN 18:20 LCY 19:15 E90 x6
AZ224 LIN 20:30 LCY 21:25 E90 x6

http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/ne...don-and-milan/

From Travel Mole:

New London mayor paves way for Docklands airport expansion


New mayor of London Sadiq Khan has withdrawn City Hall's objection to London City Airport's £300 million expansion plan.

The move paves the way for a larger terminal and a new taxiway for aircraft, which will allow the airport to handle 40% more flights and larger aircraft.

The mayor's spokeman told the Financial Times he had withdrawn the objection to the airport buying land from the Greater London Authority that it needs for the expansion.

He said Khan's decision was based on new evidence submitted by London City Airport and ongoing negotiations.

Khan's predecessor Boris Johnson had tried to block the plans because of concerns about noise. Instead, he was pushing for a new London airport in the Thames Estuary.

The airport still needs planning permission and has lodge an application with the planning inspector, whose report must be approved by the Government.

I see the relatively new Cork route has been cancelled by Cityjet.

Understand loads were marginal; never got the chance to try it myself. I wonder how much they were influenced by the grossly extended flying time required for arrivals now; from the Cork direction seems to be the worst for extended routings ("Fly Cityjet to London, we'll show you Cap Gris Nez from the air and how the 146/RJ handles trundling along at Minimum Manoeuvring Speed for 30 minutes" is not much of an advertising tagline, is it ?)


The new nonsense doesn't affect inbounds from mainland Europe to the same extent. You would have thought that LCY would be up in arms about this, but I presume management have their hands full with their new Canadian schoolteacher owners - whose comprehension of aviation in another continent cannot be top of their teaching abilities.

Not quite sure what you mean about speed...according to the RNAV Transition Charts arrivals to RW27 185 KIAS max limit is at 6DME, admittedly on RW09 it's closer to 20nm from touchdown (but then it always was).

Don't be too hard on the teachers, their pensions board also owns Bristol Airport and has stakes in Birmingham, Brussels and Copenhagen airports too so they probably know something about aviation.

Yes that may be, but I mean all that low level droning/vectoring way before this we now get, out over the wind turbines in the Lower Thames Estuary/Goodwin Sands area a good 20 minutes or more before touchdown.

Flight Deck recently announced such an approach as "APPARENTLY it's the best route", with just the faintest trace of sarcasm ...

I may have been on that same flight. I flew Cityjet the other morning, it was clear from the Captains welcome onboard greetings as he proceeded to explain the new route entry into the Ldn zone, you could sense his sarcasism. It's ridiculous. I was stuck so had no option but use City, I've shifted to broadly using Gatwick or Stansted (as last resort) with fast track security passes. The chaos at STN security is mental.

Came through again just now. There are apologies cycling round on the FIDS at the gates from the airport management about how they have been delayed in expanding the capacity of the terminal. Which may be busy now but I still breezed through security by hardly stopping.

However, part of the "improvements" has been the replacement of the FIDS screens themselves (I can't remember when this was done). Whoever thought that up ? The basic screen format is now two shades of grey, far less readable than the previous ones, plus they need to cycle round a lot more than the old ones, as soon as you have identified your flight it cycles round and you are waiting for it to come round again. So whoever fell for the salesman of these ?

Maybe the next "improvement" will be putting the old ones back.

Those info screens are appalling. You can't read them unless you're two foot away.
Worse than any other airport I can think of.

The panels they are using have a significant fall off in brightness as the angle of view from dead centre increases. The screen alongside Gate 1 is unreadable from the work "perches" by the window. That suggests they are of low quality. And as WHBM says you have to wait a while until the page with your flight on eventually cycles round. And unless i am staring continously at the panel I inevitably miss he page I want to read...

Does the LCY to Billund route with Sun Air still run? It is still advertised on Sun Air's website but I cannot find a trace of it in either BA's booking engine or on FR 24.

Adam

glad I'm not the only one who finds them so bad. truly awful when I was through there recently

When BA introduced LHR-BLL this summer, I suspected this would be quietly axed.

The route still operates. Flights are available in September. I suspect like a lot of Scandinavian routes, it takes a break over summer as most businesses take a holiday.

If anyone works as cabin crew for BACF @ LCY I'd be grateful of a PM. Thanks!

The Government has approved LCY's expansion plans.


London City Airport Granted £344m Expansion


This should enable much more growth.

Slight change of topic from flightpaths and the expansion, but I'd be grateful for advice. I have been offered a ticket online with BA (using Avios) TXL-LCY-GLA with 90 mins "connection" at LCY. I believe that there is no actual flight connection at LCY and I would need to collect luggage and check in again. Is 90 mins okay for that at LCY these days and would the airline be responsible for any missed connections?

Providing your flight isn't delayed it's more than enough time. The walk and effort involved in collecting your baggage and going back through is less than a connection at most other airports.


If BA are offering the flight then yes they would be responsible should the connection fail.

I have repeatedly done connections at LCY with less than 1 hour scheduled connection time. Never had a problem. Only risk are extraordinarily long queues before security - I have never tried if the folks at the barrier let connecting passengers take the short cut.

Thank you! Looks feasible then. I suppose their business model doesn't really require provision for many connecting passengers, hence their lack of a dedicated "transfer" facility.

There are an increasing number of connections sold through LCY, for pax it's no real issue to walk past baggage claim, up the escalator, and through security again. A word with the queue marshal (the entrance to the security area has recently changed) can have you stepped past any long queue, although recently I've found I'm walking straight up to the scanner anyway (a new bottleneck and queues seems to be developing at bag drop/check in). Bear in mind that although UK-LCY-Europe can connect without recheck, Europe-originating pax require a security check.

I always despair to find, looking around LCY somewhat lost, pax (invariably non-British) who have been sold ticketing of say AMS-LCY, then connecting across London to a LHR-LAX several hours later. You have to wonder what sort of corporate travel agent (because they are invariably business travellers) sets this up.

Very good :ok: . I hope LCY have the contractors lined up to start tomorrow.

Speaking of contractors, what is all the plant that has been assembled around the west end of the runway in recent days ? The contractor is Lagan, who are specialists in runway resurfacing. Is the main runway getting redone ?

WHBM, very often I see on the search engines (Kayak, Skyscanner, Momondo) plus on airline websites themselves (BA in particular) connections from Scotland or Europe into one London airport but leaving from another. I remember you used to be able to through check your bags if you were transferring LHR-LGW, but it still wasn't very convenient. I have set up my own "connections" changing airports in London in the past, but being from the UK at least I expect it and am familiar enough with London.

Reminds me when I used to see many passengers missing their flights at PIK, having gotten in a taxi in Glasgow city centre and told the driver "Airport please", and been taken to GLA.

Probably poor form to reply to my own note, but I've just had a look at the Lagan website and it seems a full runway/taxiway resurfacing is indeed in prospect. If they are assembling their own asphalt batching plant and bringing materials in by the shipload it's going to be quite a project.

Lagan Construction International lands London City Airport contract - Lagan Construction Group


Plenty of activity during the Saturday/Sunday shutdown for the next few months then.