Plenty of sympathy yes, but it is now a major airport in this country and should come to be expected.

LHR will be very busy tomorrow; clearly not as busy as normal ops, but still many flights many of which to destinations where they very much celebrate Christmas tomorrow - it's a cheaper day to fly. There will be many no doubt heading to JNB for the first test match on Boxing Day as an example.

How many flights are scheduled?

66 I believe, and that is without any EZY departures at Luton. EZY have a small program from LGW and running about 380 sectors around Europe, next year expect more!

ltn
 

inc 2 BA deps...............................

A quick count of the boards shows 66 departures and 58 arrivals but they both run out of room so there might be more. Also I think 4 Wizz came in during the early hours that are now not showing so that makes at least 128 movements.

Not much public transport today so today is the day of the car.

Freight I would assume, usual codeshare A300F

Drove through the back of the airport at lunchtime and could not see any vacant stands just a mass of Easyjet and a few Ryanair aircraft with not a Wizz in sight. Without the first wave of Easyjet departures I was wondering where the inbound Wizz parked as I would not have thought the Wizz based aircraft would have provided enough spare stands.

About 40 FBO movements as well, a few would normally use Farnborough.

Actual number - 134 airline movements

The last update of caa statistic of November 18.127.372, what is happened now? If the maximum allow is only 18.000.000

The airport in collusion with the council only count certain passenger types so the airport in their eyes is still below 18 million at just over 17.9 million. In the short term the airport has imposed restrictions for 2020 which allegedly stopped Air India coming to Luton. For 2021 they expect the council to raise passenger limits to 19 million which will happen seeing they own the asset. It will then be gradually increased to 22.5 million regardless of the planning application for a second terminal which will go to government.

In reality, how can you manage this anyway? You can't second guess how many passengers are going to turn up for a certain flight and for sure you cannot impose load factor quotas on certain flights.

18m passenger will probably equate to 20m seats - but if you have higher than expected load factors, you're always going to go over the top.

Correct, it is a limit in words only. Is there a legal precedence on what the limit it? Actual pax turning up? Booked seats, available seats? Seats on sheduled flights only?

A question about Air India, reported by many sources, despite the preference of a Slough MP that the Amritsar route should run via Luton, I think it was at the limit of the range if a 788 from Luton's runway. With them now starting Mumbai which is 450miles further, would this have been technically a bridge to far anyhow?

I would expect that it is monitored based on planned flights e.g. airline tells airport we would like to operate X flights using Y a/c = Z number of seats and airport should be saying no, you need to reduce by Q% if the planning limited is exceeded. There maybe an adjustment made to take account of load factor e.g expected pax rather than availbale seats, but I would expect that it can only be managed in advance by the number of planned flights.

Managed in advance - the schedules are out up to 12-18 months in advance!

Using the airports own measuring criteria Luton could be in breach of its planning permission probably in November if passenger numbers continue to grow but the council takes a report from the airport operator only every 3 months plus up to 28 additional days. The 18 million limit is for commercial passengers only so excludes infants and non paying passengers.

The airport operator has put a ban in place for any increase in movements but that still allows larger aircraft to be used. When the airport busts 18 million commercial passengers this will allow pressure groups to make complaints to the council but it is doubtful if the council will take any action when there is a pending planning application to increase passengers to 19 million. Remember Luton Airport is Luton Borough Council.

Just new routes and charters? Source please.
Euro 2020 with a few games in London this summer.