dj6, some good points well made.

So in between slating the airport and airlines for trying to save their businesses and the jobs of their employees which leads to lots of people in quite a small airport terminal complex, we now want to senior managers to needlessly and "regularly" walk around the airport terminal doing the job of the non-senior managerial team. Interesting take. Damned if they do...

I'm agree with avidspotter.

You'd sometimes be forgiven for thinking this might be the LADACAN message board

From what I recall, every senior manager at McDonalds has to spend one day per year on the kitchen floor, flipping burgers. Yes, people on $1m+ per year, shaking fries

I wouldn't expect senior management at Luton airport to be spending considerable amounts of time cleaning the toilets, but I would expect them to be on the customer-facing areas of the airport on a regular basis (even 1 hour per week would suffice) to see what's actually happening - and also be talking on a regular basis with the junior staff. Equally I would expect board level directors at an airline to be on a flight of their airline every now and again (e.g. every 3 months) - if only to remind themselves of how the company's product is delivered in the real world and see what could be done better. Simply by being visible to junior staff, the senior manager motivates the rest of the employees - i.e. lead from the front
Hiding away in the executive office suite usually leads to an out-of-touch manager who doesn't really understand their business. If a senior manager doesn't want to be on the notional shop floor because they're worried about health risks - then it's not suitable for the junior staff either

Absolutely correct. If senior managers sit in their offices they will only know what the middle managers tell them, and they will only know what the front line tell them, and they know that their career depends on telling their bosses what they want to hear.
All the best and most successful customer-focussed businesses ensure that the senior management have direct contact with the front line.

Did anyone notice BlueAir operating a scheduled service from/to Suceava today in competition with Wizz, apparently four weekly. I cannot remember any announcement about the route but maybe I have been half asleep!

Temperary Bacau Airport Closure I suspect, but a few days early
"Following the decision of the Bacău International Airport Administration, regarding the temporary closure of the airport between August 15 and September 30, 2020 for carrying out modernization works, Blue Air is forced to transfer the planned flights to the airports in the region."

Yep the old adage was "if you don't walk it you don't own it"

Senior managers attend https://www.llacc.com/ meetings. They know exactly what is going on.

List of attendees of the last meeting here. https://www.llacc.com/wp-content/upl...-20-Final-.pdf

The last meeting was held in July. Minutes are from Pre Covid January, as the April meeting was cancelled but they are now conducted online.

While waiting for the July passenger figures I would be surprised if Luton hasn’t handled close to a million passengers in August based on the constant noise outside.

Another interesting YouTube video has appeared online of a passengers experience passing through Luton and travelling on the 14:40 Wizz flight to Rhodes, which was using an A321 and was full.

The airport seemed fine at that time of day but I noticed at the very end passengers were bussed to the terminal at Rhodes. Basically once the passenger join the queue for boarding at Luton until he reached the terminal at the other end there is no social distancing, which must carry a risk.

For those not familiar with Luton this is quite a good video to watch as it shows different parts of the airport.

Search for the link directly on Youtube for the HD version.

It carries risk if people are not wearing face coverings because if they cough, sneeze or release fluid particles (which we do breathing anyway) then there is a small risk of that getting in to the eyes of someone stood nearby. The social distance allows those particles to fall. If however everyone is wearing face coverings the transmission is so low it is almost impossible as long as people don’t touch their masks and then touch their face. There is so much scaremongering with this at the moment but if people comply with basic guidance we can almost go about our business as usual.

The exceptions are places like cafes, restaurants, pubs etc where face coverings cannot be worn because of the purpose of that business.

Google Bedford Deep Dive. Recent spike there revealed working age people were contracting the virus.

People should be free to fly or travel wherever they like, but face a mandatory 14 day isolation on return. I think that is only fair on the rest of the UK population until a proven and effective vaccine is rolled out. I also think that the furlough scheme for the travel sector should roll through next winter.

[QUOTE=LTNman;10858756]While waiting for the July passenger figures I would be surprised if Luton hasn’t handled close to a million passengers in August based on the constant noise outside.

Heathrow only handled 800,000 pax in July !
Luton appears to be the 'clear' winner in terms of getting numbers back but cant see July being more then 300,000 and August 400,000

Everyone familiar with aviation knew that the extra careful cleaning and the distancing (at the airport or on board an aircraft) is only PR bs. 24 people with covid was found on a Wizz Skopje-Turku flight on Saturday. According to media reports a guy with covid was working in Wizz's Budapest HQ for more than a week with symptoms (...), hospitalized, the staff is not even advised who it was. How on earth would they know who had close contact with him then? Yep cash is king.

A tad wet & thunderstormy at the moment, hope the buckets are out in the terminal!
Some holding starting on arrivals.

July 2020 Stats
 

https://mediahub.london-luton.co.uk/...by-74?ref=Home
Approx 465,000 pax for month.

Looks like Luton and Stansted's figures will be very similar and 2nd / 3rd to Heathrow in July

I am actually struggling to think what hard work and effort their teams have put in apart from adding a few sanitiser stations, putting in a few random floor markings, closing off some seating and adding a very short section of one way barriers that covers around 10% of the route from the drop off zone to the terminal.

His comment about passengers passing through the airport safely just don’t add up when there is no enforcement of social distancing breaches but then the airport does not have the space to allow for social distancing. It would be better to be upfront and admit deficiencies so potential passengers can make informed decisions.

The airports good fortune, if that is the right word, is that Wizz is the airports biggest operator.

Personally I find it a bit disingenuous singling out Luton or any airport for that matter regarding social distancing. It seems to me that after the Cummings debacle most people said sod this for a lark. In my local area SD is very hit and miss and mostly miss. Last week I decided to have a meal out for the first time since March. The restaurant in question never asked me for my name or phone number (I thought it was the law) and sit anywhere you like - it was not busy so that really did not matter that much.
Back to airport matters I would think the airport is quite pleased to get nearly half a million passengers in July in the present climate.

​​​​

The council might be worried that it dilutes their case for Central Govenment assistance.

Is that the first W9 Moscow flight for a while today?

Airport CEO's always make positive public statements whatever the situation otherwise it'll put off people using the airport

There is a difference between positive statements and lies. Why not just be open and say we will do our best and put in as many measures as we can but we can not guarantee social distancing in all situations.

On a different note, while walking the dog, I spoke to a man I know who knows someone heavily involved in the Dart protect. He said the the ski slope that is meant to represent flight and that adorns the bridge over the A1081 has cost £850,000 and was a major engineering project to build and attach to the bridge.

Well it looks nice and will look better still when the LED backlighting is switch on. I have never been a fan of Luton’s cheap as chips terminal where the airport operator has built it to a cost cutting budget. The same can’t be said for the council funded Dart where no expense has been spared. With the £18m overspend and a year to go before opening the bill so far comes to £243m excluding the 5 year maintenance contract that has been signed. If the second terminal is built the Dart will be a necessity. If it isn’t the Dart will be a white elephant at a cost of £4m a second time saving between the published travel times for the Dart at 5 minutes and the shuttle bus at 6 minutes.

With the airport reaching capacity in 2019, some 2 years before the completion of the Dart, the Dart was never needed to enhance capacity for the existing airport although it will improve passengers perception of Luton as a major airport although most passengers will never use it.

LTNman...

As you continue your theme of social distancing at LTN & to extrapolate surely the relevant Government Departments are fully aware too & continuing then my own theme are by inference condoning the situation along with the PM`s position of (mass) travel but with no National mitigation as such...If you wish to construe this as "Government bashing" so well & good but first duty of Government always is to protect the populace & it does appear they fail Nationally in fundamental regards...

Perhaps you should write to the the relevant departments & No10 with your perceptions at LTN & for the interest of the forum/s then publish the answers & explanations received...

I think the difficulty is there are people who don’t maybe have any friends or family to have discussions of their thoughts and suchlike, so coming on here is perhaps the only way of engaging in such topics that they are passionate about. I don’t have a problem with that personally as long as he continues to post the cool pictures of the airport which I’m sure we all appreciate.

I think LTNman would be quite happy having no one going through the airports at the moment. The subsequent job losses and significant impact on mental health of thousands upon thousands wouldn’t matter. So bored of this now. Fact is we need to get people moving if we are to have any aviation industry left particularly with winter, the harshest of months financially for airlines, just around the corner.

Lets all try to be positive
 

Fortunately LTN Airport is operating and flight programmes are continuing to flourish. For the very first time in my life I witnessed 8 aircraft all lined up and ready to take their turn to depart runway 07. It made me realise we will eventually return to normal times once more. No politics and no negativity makes reading comments in here more enjoyable!

lol. It is only here I find people who share the same passions. My old woman and adult children don’t give a monkeys. We all might disagree sometimes but it makes for stimulating conversations with some well reasoned thoughts that do influence opinions. If we just posted about new routes and airlines I don’t think there would be many posts.

I have been told that businesses wishing to send their staff abroad are facing a massive hike in the cost of insuring them against contracting Covid-19. You cannot check out new suppliers, ensure good working practices are being maintained by suppliers, or a vast plethora of other tasks that involve staff members having to travel. Once an effective vaccine is rolled out, I can see a sudden exponential growth. Brilliant news for airlines, as supply and demand would dictate excellent yields. The pent up demand by then will be massive. Trying to forecast demand and the agility to move capacity rapidly as lockdowns around the globe occur will dictate the survival of the fittest. By far the greatest challenge for any government will be to prevent a second wave. Winter as we all know is the time when viruses love to transfer from their hosts. If any industry needs enduring support, it is the travel and hospitality sector. Without such support, I suspect wholesale redundancies from November 1st. I don't think anyone can really predict what aviation will look like in the UK 12 months from now? My own guess would be that if slots become available in substantial quantity at Heathrow and Gatwick next Spring, could we see the resident airlines prepared to switch capacity away from Luton if the price is right? If I was LBC, I'd have a Plan B in my back pocket.

Ah well the post #4227 just above from LTNman gets my accolade at least as one of the best ever replies too...in a good way...

Construction update
 

The Gateway bridge has had its superstructure fully painted. The slope is in white and the supports are in battleship grey. While the bridge seems to be all but complete work continues around its base. Temporary fencing still covers the crossing but lower permanent fencing is already in place. The highest part of the bridge has a red warning light attached. Note the bridge is actually curved which doesn't show in this photo.
https://i.imgur.com/IkglI0b.jpg

Central station has had its upper steelwork installed. The design doesn't seem great at keeping the rain out. The white objects are the tops of the escalators that are covered in plastic.
https://i.imgur.com/AKo0soH.jpg

Viewed from the terminal side this will be the route from the terminal to the station. To the left is the service road. When finished passengers heading for the drop off zone will still have to follow the route under the footbridge and then turn sharp left followed after 100m by a sharp right turn.
https://i.imgur.com/eV5l7Rf.jpg

The bigger picture. The concrete structure closest to the camera will not normally have passenger access. Note the grey painted concrete wall that is being dug out.
https://i.imgur.com/AzXSlwp.jpg

Finally to the left of the coach will be the new access route for authorised vehicles only including coach and taxi rank access.
https://i.imgur.com/HUrCMv0.jpg

Having used and operated out of LTN for several decades, I’m no fan of the airport and all of it’s faults that are mostly in my mind due to cost cutting. There is much criticism above of the airport’s handling of COVID and passenger segregation but of what I’ve seen of some other airports in Western Europe recently, LTN airport is doing at least as good, if not better job than most.

The airline involved seemed to be genuinely trying their best as well to provide segregation when possible but the passengers generally seemed to not always be helping matters.

excellent photos and updates as always LTNman. Appreciated :ok:

Done just for you, you see comments and opinions can influence me.

One thing I noticed this month is just how busy the airport has become even over July. Easyjet still has 3 or 4 aircraft on the south stands with their engine covers on but apart from that I would struggle to tell a difference between road and aircraft traffic compared to last year. The majority of the mid term car park is full and maybe around 70% of the long term car park is now occupied.

In landside M&S is still closed as is Starbucks while in airside more and more shops and eating establishments continue to reopen although I suspect the more unsuccessful ones will now never reopen.

It is hard to judge total passenger numbers as passengers seem to arrive and depart in noticeable waves now but I think they will be substantially up on July. The airport and terminal seem to be carrying the ideal amount of passengers without making it feel overcrowded so I will be interested to read the passenger reviews over the coming months.

It is already hard to remember the drop off zone without a single car in it yet it was only on April 15th I took this.

https://i.imgur.com/AvdgD2u.jpg

Yesterday
https://i.imgur.com/VINV40S.jpg

Currently running at just over 200 passenger movements a day. Wizzair look to be almost at normal, but EZY movements well down, and often one or more of the based Ryans doesn't leave in the first wave.

I said on the 12th that I was thinking close to a million passengers for August. I might be way off but I am still thinking similar numbers but passengers might be dropping as late booking passengers are put off by fresh quarantine measures and the inability now to complete 2 weeks quarantine before the schools go back for some destinations.

A quick analysis of yesterday (Sunday) showed:
Passenger movements (excl. freight and positioning): 219
Of which:
BLA 7
EZY 76
EJU 4
WUK 42
WZZ 63
RYR - EI 22
RYR - SP 4
LOG 1
I have counted EZY/EJU and WUK/WZZ by flight code, but RYR by aircraft registration.

219 flights x 31 days x 147 passengers per flight = 1m passengers for August. Maybe I will be spot on if 147 is the average load.

The one million figure might be just about reachable, but it will depend on how long Greece and its islands stay off the 14 day England quarantine requirement.
But alas l think it will be at the latest for only this week or part of next week.

I am not so sure all flights would average 147 pax.
I would imagine Wizz are loading well but not sure about all easyjet flights ?
I would estimate August at less then 700k
But I got July wrong !

Ryanair have announced demand is dropping so maybe Luton has peaked over the last couple of weeks. Maybe we should run a sweepstake to guess the August figures. 1m and 700k so far. Who has their finger on the pulse?