The HAL publicity is softening up the opposition by reducing costs by £2.5bn. The crayons are out to plan a smaller terminal (not T6 of course). Maybe this will pay for all the roads owned by UK plc that have to be moved at our cost

Agree 126.1%.
All major national infrastructure should be self funding, so we can be more like the US of A, where it would be crumbling around us. (not!)
In unrelated news, we'd never have built the Channel Tunnel or a single nuclear power station.
Can we just reflect on how self-funding our railway infrastructure is? By your reasoning we'd need to stop spending there as well.
You don't seriously think anyone in Govt treats HAL like any other commercial business. It's one of our major national infrastructure components that's rightly or wrongly, now in private hands. The perils of selling off the family silver is a bias towards public risk and private reward, but we can't just stop infrastructure spending in the manner you suggest.

Just move house man, this is REALLY going to make your life a misery if it goes ahead and you feel this badly.

29 minutes to reply.

Just move house man, this is REALLY going to make your life a misery if it goes ahead and you feel this badly

It will make a misery for over 100,000 more as well if it goes ahead.

Like buying a house next to a stadium and giving out about crowds....

To be fair the much vaunted savings are for the benefit of the shareholders and HAL.

COSTS to the taxpayer are still eyewatering.

Could someone bang some heads together in order to make some savings in this area or does the taxpayer have to meekly accept them ?

Improvements to Stansted to rail would cost a pittence of what Heathrow road / rail would cost but would still make a dramatic improvement.

It would not be so bad if there were some figures on the taxpayer ROI in the form of dividends?

Maybe if the taxpayer puts up a quarter of the capital they should own/ have the right to auction a quarter of the new slots.

Think you may be missing the point: with another rwy, there will be plenty of slots available, consequently slots will have no monetary value, and there will be no secondary slot market.



How would the two compare in terms of a cost-benefit analysis?

So much for Heathrow's owners wanting less UK domestic routes when it's offering discount deals like this in 2018.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/02/heathrow-slashes-passenger-charges-domestic-flights-bid-expansion/

I don't recall HAL ever being on record as saying they want fewer domestic routes. When was that ?

This doesn't suggest more flights, to me it seems to be trying to make existing routes more attractive. The airport needs people though the door and spending time in the terminal while they wait for connections, if a BA jet is heading off to Leeds or Inverness on a slot-sitting mission it's much better for it to be 80% full than flying fresh air around.

In LBIA's defence the airport may not have actually said they don't want any domestic, but their pricing makes it prohibititive because it's biased towards larger aircraft. With the best will in the world you aren't going to get 777s heading to Newquay or Humberside.

Stansted
 

On the Stansted thread they are welcoming a B777 of EK later this year, which will reduce the number of miles passengers travel from Essex, the northern quarter of London, and Herts etc to LHR by road to use the normal services. Is this the future? happy new year everyone.:O

While LHR is at bursting point, airlines only grow with bigger planes or new routes, the addition of STN is more of a growth plan, as it still serves to London Area with more capacity.

It probably will be the future, until the 3rd runway is built, so definately going long term

Possibly that might be true on day 1 but this is an investment for a generation or two.


I'm not sure we yet understand how the regulator intends to release the slots. Maybe not all at once in a huge splurge? Has anything been said about that?


I presume there will be a considerable diversion from the waiting room to take account of.


I could believe that arrival slots in the early morning weekdays will be close to capacity very early on while slots on a Saturday afternoon in November will be in plentiful supply for years.


Correct me if I'm wrong--- if we leave the EU, we are free to distribute the slots via whatever auction or allocation process we choose, subject only to common law?

A question is who actually owns the slots.......... a Govt in need of revenue might well take them all over and auction them off to the highest bidder...............

It remains to be seen, of course. There have been multiple attempts by long haul carriers at Heathrow to have a shot at parallel services from Stansted. American Airlines for example have had more than one attempt. All have previously failed, of course.

To take the Emirates example, I periodically travel for business to Dubai. And I live more conveniently close by road to Stansted than to Heathrow. And the westbound Emirates flight, daytime, is timed right. But the return is overnight, which I don't want. I want a lunchtime departure from Heathrow, on Saturday, for a midnight arrival at Dubai. So I'll still use Heathrow.

Actually this is only the fourth time, and in reality would seem to be the first genuine and sustainable attempt. The previous cases were:

1. American to Chicago. Far too early in STN's development, and politically motivated.

2. American to JFK. Clearly a spoiler for the premium carriers. Binned almost overnight after the collapse of Eos.

3. PIA to Karachi. Ceased after PIA's aircraft were banned from EU airspace.

Continental operated to Newark of course, but they were not at Heathrow at that time. This service did well, but was canned in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the collapse in trans-Atlantic air travel.

I am in no doubt EK will do well, and I believe a second daily service will come forward within a couple of years.

Why was STN-ORD politically motivated? Btw given STN was intended for exactly that sort of operation, London’s third airport and all, two brand new satellites and people mover with airbridges and wide body parking all attached to a world class award winning fit for purpose terminal, I am puzzled why you say it was too early. The AA operation at LHR was smaller then too as much remained at LGW, whereas AA sought to beat BA in it’s own backyard by not just using LHR.

As an airport planner (!), can you add some detail? From what I heard it was simply that the yields were (very) poor. Btw if you read the STN thread when AA tried JFK there are a few people claiming yields werw good AND it was going double daily!

AirportPlanner1..
As above...a very clear & correct explanation of previous erstwhile attempts at STN...

There remains much obfuscation concerning the AA services particularly the JFK & all posters will have their own beliefs & perhaps agenda.

There is no doubt the AA JFK was a killer service aimed at MAX & particularly EOS.

Before my time here but as to the claim the AA JFK was going double daily with other destinations planned is what we heard on the ground but which transpired ultimately to be part of the spoiling tactics & psychological warfare in place at the time.

The airline said it would be going double daily. I don't have any quotes to hand but I can tell you it wasn't just the dream of the local spotters.

Regarding Chicago, with the massive investment in STN a lot was done behind the scenes to get a star headliner in. Remember, at that time STN barely had any kind of meaningful European network. Just key cities in F100s and 146s plus a few small props to the likes of Maastricht. Then along comes AA with their 767. It would be quite similar to Southampton gaining such a service today.