PPRuNe Forums - Luton-9

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Coronavirus might well have persuaded a few more engineers to move as their choice would be move of face long term unemployment.

Gulfstream wanted to remain at Luton but were stonewalled by LLAL who refused to offer them land for a new hangar and apron within the existing boundary, as it would have impacted the Councils expansion plans. Even under plans for a land grab of the local park there are no plans for new hangars there.

Aircraft maintenance has been on the decline for years at Luton. Signature at Luton stopped doing heavy maintenance years ago. Their new hangar by cargo has only car parking for around 10 cars, has no office space and was built just for parking aircraft out of the rain.

No company has replaced Monarch Engineering who had 3 hangars at one time leaving just Harrods, Easyjet and TUI.

One of Luton’s issues remains getting aircraft in and out of hangars as the hangar lines are often blocked with parked aircraft. The other issue is the cost of parking aircraft that are awaiting maintenance or have completed maintenance.

Interesting priorities from the council if that is the case. Engineering jobs are normally described as the sort of well paid, skilled jobs councils are keen to attract - whereas the jobs created by handling low cost airlines...

Construction update

Photos taken yesterday.
Parkway Dart station is getting a roof which is free standing and not connected to the walls.
https://i.imgur.com/T6FFDac.jpg

View from across the railway tracks. Careful examination shows the two entry and exit points for the Dart trains
https://i.imgur.com/Tol4DWp.jpg

At Central Station the framework for the roof is being installed. The roof will match that of Parkway.
https://i.imgur.com/Osbcc58.jpg

The concrete building contains 2 lift shafts, a public staircase, a fire escape staircase and two tunnel vent shafts.
https://i.imgur.com/1XrwqGE.jpg

How it is meant to look with the second multi story car park missing
https://i.imgur.com/UpPS3lo.jpg

Work is under way to restore the original dual carriageway route with its junction with the bus station and taxi rank. As can be seen the steel sheeting that was holding the embankment in place has disappeared.
https://i.imgur.com/u003VLv.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by SWBKCB (Post 10851356)

The councils priority is making money and not creating well paid jobs. 3 new hangars are shown on expansion plans replacing the Easyjet academy and the other modern buildings south of President Way but that could be years away and might never be built. Gulfstream wanted land now with the obvious place next to the Harrods hangars. The Council said no as that land is meant to be an apron for a second terminal.

LLAL's cram 'em in at all costs attitude has certainly led to the decline of heavy aircraft maintenance at LTN. I can't see any serious takers for the ex Monarch hangars as the parking restrictions already mentioned will prove too limiting. As it is, TUI have to wrangle with the airport on a daily basis during the busy hangar season to come up with a plan to shuffle aircraft around and deal with arrivals and departures.

Unfortunately the days of the hangar line being used virtually exclusively by Monarch and Britannia hangar aircraft with the odd cargo and ad-hoc aircraft are just a fond memory!:(

Should heavy maintenance really be done at a major passenger airport where space will almost certainly be very limited, or better to put a business that needs lots of room in a location where it can be found easily ?

Manston, your time has come... !

The problem with that theory - where do the engineers live that you need to do the work? Certainly not within close proximity to Manston!

Well that's why Gulfstream went. Also under threat, which has receded now for a few years due to Covid is FBO's at Luton.

Medium term Luton FBOs are doing Ok, 80 Biz movements yesterday. On a normal F1 weekend they would have been turning business away to Oxford, Cranfield & Stansted. You can even get nighttime slots which would have been a no no pre covid.

Think the nighttime ban on biz jets is meant to be still in force.

Best keep quiet about it then, no current NOTAM about it that I can find.
Is this not current then https://www.signatureflight.com/even...rt-night-slots ?

You are indeed correct as I have dug out the letter. I was told in March from the horses mouth that not only was there going to be no changes this year but also in future years.

Quote:

Noise restrictions commencing Summer 20

In both 2018 and 2019, I wrote to you advising of operational restrictions that we had to put in place following a breach of our permitted night noise contour limit. I advised at the time that the restrictions would be in place for every subsequent Summer season.
I am writing to you today to update you on the restrictions that we plan to implement from 1st June 2020 and in light of the current challenges the industry is facing in relation to COVID- 19. Many of these restrictions were communicated at the S20 coordination committee on the 18th September 2019 and remain unchanged from previous seasons.
The following measures will be in place from 1st June 2020, and will be reviewed on a monthly basis across the summer season;
• A limit of 15 ad-hoc movements will be permitted per week from 1st June 2020. This restriction includes GA and Maintenance flights between 2200-0559 GMT
• No further night slots to be allocated to series flights 2200-0559 GMT 1st June – 30th September
• No re-scheduling of existing allocated slots from the day time 0600-2159 GMT into the night time 2200-0559 GMT 1st June – 30th September
• For the Summer 2020 season and all subsequent seasons no aircraft with a value greater than QC1 will be permitted to operate in the night-time period (although there are current exemptions for cargo aircraft containing essential supplies due to COVID-19)
• No new slot applications with an aircraft QC value greater than 0.5 will be permitted between 2200 – 0559 GMT
It is important for all operators to adhere to their slots, last summer we saw aircraft which were scheduled during the daytime period (0659-2159 GMT) and were actually operating during the night time period (2200-0559 GMT). If aircraft fail to adhere to slots this summer, we will be forced to implement a nighttime curfew during this period. We will continue to monitor this on a monthly basis and we will notify all operators if we need to implement this.
If you have any queries relating to the restrictions then please do not hesitate to get in touch with one of the Flight Operations Team at ***********
Hopefully some of this additional flexibility with the night restrictions will support your businesses during this challenging time although we still have to be mindful that we must work within the legal limits that are attached to our planning approval.
Yours sincerely
****** ******* Operations Director
London Luton Airport Percival House Percival Way Luton LU2 9NU 19th May 2020

Quote:

A limit of 15 ad-hoc movements will be permitted per week from 1st June 2020. This restriction includes GA and Maintenance flights between 2200-0559 GMT

Curtainly seems to be fully used.

Daily passenger movements have now crept up to 200-210. Wizz are starting more Greek routes this week, and resuming Russia later in August.

What will be more interesting is average load factors, it is great seeing more shedules but how full are the flights. It will be a long hard winter coming up soon.

Some flights are near full while others are almost empty so I am thinking well under 500,000 passengers this months. Even with so few passengers the airport has not been designed to handle even this amount so many social distancing measures have been discreetly removed in the middle of the night. The public urinals I use which had 50% taped off have been opened up. Many of the seating that is in sets of 4 have also had the tapped off areas removed. Passengers are being bussed to remote stands. Long closely packed queues form at border force otherwise passengers would be queuing on the aprons. In fact I can't think of a single area where the airport conforms to social distancing rules apart from proving sanitiser except that often runs out. What is happening is a ticking time bomb that is going to explode sooner rather than later with a second wave and Luton will have played its part.

2Excel Engineering at Lasham has recently struck a major 3 year contract with easyJet which will see heavy maintenance performed on their fleet in Hampshire. They are currently assisting with fleet disposals, but that will move on to heavy C Checks on the active fleet. Work that no doubt could have taken place in the empty hangars at Luton?

Have EZY ever done any heavy checks themselves, I don't remember? Usually cheapest outsourcing contract gets it. I think in this case fixed price contract, cost overruns contractors pay.
To setup such an operation at Luton would require, tooling , insurance , approval from caa , spares support , technical ie drawing office , structures dept , totally not possible. Boat has gone, receiver tried to sell ex MAEL on, no takers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spanish eyes (Post 10852973)

We all have to acknowledge that COVID-19 got to these shores via the airlines. That they will be responsible for the second wave is becoming more likely by the day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by asdf1234 (Post 10853937)

We all have to acknowledge that COVID-19 got to these shores via the airlines. That they will be responsible for the second wave is becoming more likely by the day.

The Plague killed 100s of millions of people throughout the World from the year 1347. I wonder what airlines were in existence back then!