You could probably do it but LHR would scream and ask for compensation as they won't make as much money from cheapo Brits transitting from the wilds as well-heeled foreigners

You say that, but time and time again it comes back to Heathrow.
Let's list the airlines who are pressing for a 2nd runway at Gatwick. : ?

This is politics now pure and simple. As a business analyst I am well used to the misuse of selective stats, I see it every day at work.

The cost benefit analysis favouring Gatwick has been rigged by inflating massively the TFL and local costs of supporting LHR infrastructure, most of which would need to be done anyway. Garbage in, garbage out. As for the environmental and noise nuisance, the future is 787s and A350s, which as a local are a fraction of the noise nuisance of the beloved "Queen of the Skies" -436 series.....

LHR is hugely problematic but if they don't press ahead they won't simply say, "Well it's LGW after all." We'll be back at square one only in a worse place. The sheer volume of jobs coupled with post Brexit need to show we are a trading nation will force the government to push ahead, even at the risk of Corbyn voting down the biggest jobs boost for his unions in generation.

As I tried to explain, a small % of protected new slots is a small price to pay for a third runway and all that comes with it. It is perfectly manageable if done sensibly.

Flybe are subsidised on LHR-EDI/ABZ????

Why would the stats be "rigged" in favour of LGW by a government that has hitched its waggon to LHR? If anything, you would expect them to bias towards LHR.

If LHR are willing to pay for it all, go ahead. What they are asking for is a massive government subsidy for surface access, and a commitment to underwrite the scheme.

In part this has been achieved by artificially closing down competition (i.e. preventing LGW runway 2) so that LHR can support its own finance by continuing to charge monopolistic prices to its airline customers who have no realistic alternative.

Great point, nailed it. In truth, Gatwick is not the realistic alternative to LHR. It could and should have been once upon a time but we are where we are now. Some fair points about the subsidy but the reality is that it's an oddity for the likes of LHR and LGW to be seen purely as private businesses. The privatised rail and energy firms by necessity get a host of public subsidy, mainly because there's a good arguement they should be publically owned. Both LHR and LGW are major parts of UK PLC infrastructure and will require public subsidy on some level on some points. The genuine argument for both airports is "How much?" TFL (a state body) have vastly inflated LHR costs in their world with the aim of getting a whole load of new money. Of course this is all politics.....

"This is politics now pure and simple."

it's envrionmental, planning and judicial ...... the courts will keep this in play for a generation

and the only bigger lobby than BA in Parlaiment is the lawyers............

BA don’t want a third runway Harry. Their market dominance would be diluted.
And the changes to planning law Osborne brought in make things much easier to avoid too much courtroom theatre. So, tricky but not as impossible as some would love to believe.

The argument still has to stack up. As things stand, it clearly does not. Unless something changes, runway 3 is a dead duck.

With regards to regional links and thus the whole purpose of hub: forget it. As I have said before, the 'do nothing' policy of the UK govts across the last 30 years have ensured that all the regions have been snapped up by KLM/AF, Lufthansa + other Euro carriers (inc FR) and, now, all the ME carriers are taking pax from the regions to THEIR hubs.

Whilst the Conservatives love to shout about letting the market work - here they have signally failed by preventing the market and, now, the market has gone elsewhere. LHR is doomed to remain the smallest and most insignificant of European hubs. Game Over (Brexit or not)

Is this true?

Heathrow typical passenger load is 78.5%. So almost 1/4 of empty seats. Suddenly 98.5% isn't all as it seems... https://t.co/WUgoJwt8tx https://t.co/UfCDZCZHXe

Extracted from The Times.

Definitely a Yes Minister
About turn in play.

As an aside I wonder if Lillian Greenwood will resign.

Even though she should be impartial she nailed her colours firmly to the mast by suggesting we

"get on and build Heathrow", hmmmmm
Somewhat premature as it was the first day of her appointment. Not much objectivity there then.

Even I thought the Head of the Parliamentary Transport Committee was supposed to be impartial, I was staggered that she made such a gung ho remark given her position.

Based on the latest data if there is not a reversal of that position to a more neutral view then she surely has to resign ?

It is one thing for MPs to make unqualified soundbite remarks but quite another for somebody of her authority and her position ?


The Local Government Technical Advisers Group vice chair John Elliott – who has given evidence to the Transport Select Committee in the past – welcomed Lilian Greenwood’s appointment. He said:

“We are hoping a little bit more attention is paid to challenge evidence and policy.”

We would all welcome that in what is becoming a fog in terms of who and what to believe.

The omni shambles doesn't end with the Transport Committee either.

The Transport Secretary says one thing whilst his department takes the contrary view and briefs against him. Incredible!

Have you data to establish that LHR is the smallest and most insignificant European hub? Last time I saw any report on this, it was still #1.

Possibly for UK regional airports feeding in, since much of the long haul business does now indeed find it's way on to one of the middle eastern carriers, or via FRA, AMS or CDG. It would be interesting to learn how much business from secondary airports in Europe and the middle east uses LHR to hub on to other (BA) services, or in the other direction with passengers from secondary north American airports using BA to hub into Europe.

I don't think it is #1 for regional PAX in the UK. I think it serves more worldwide destinations and has more interchange PAX.

I would have to agree with In Oban. The ammount of long haul taffic from the reigons of the UK using LHR has dropped over the last say 15 years, and continues to drain away. It is not just that LHR is not the best place to transit for some, but it is also served by BA which is no longer the go to carrier for every Brit going long haul, and especially if going East. The ME3 have put paid to that, and LH/AF/KLM are doing the same on other routes if you are not SE UK based.

It's still an incredibly strong proposition to market going West.

Even United who have a STAR hub at FRA have more flights out of LHR due to the much larger O&D market which also allows a swathe of connections onto LH FRA flights, I kid you not.
BA/AA is also an incredibly strong offering. Fed from both ends, they offer 23 US airports totaling 61 flights per day going into the USA.

In total it's :
Oneworld
AA 20
BA 41 US + 5 CA

STAR
AC 10
UA 17

Skyteam
DL 12
VS 17

So around 122 westbound scheduled daily transatlantic flights. Still #1 in that market by quite some way.

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/l...70101.html?amp

AND now The Evening Standard is briefing against Heathrow.

Quite so. It's not rocket science - Heathrow handles more transfer pax than any other European airport, by a long chalk.

The repeated argument of the 'hub' and its connectivity to most other UK regions is delusional...

You would be surprised the numbers of UK pax heading to AMS, FRA and CDG rather than trek to LHR. Personally speaking, I am one of them. I'd much rather use AMS in particular than mess around in the hell hole of LHR!

And in relation to Gatwick, it is repeatedly stated Gatwick is 'harder' to get to. Same can be said of LHR for anyone south of central London, east Surrey, Sussex, Kent and some of Hampshire. These are exactly the pax who also simply turn up at Gatters and board a quick short hop to the Continent to then catch their long haul flight. :cool::hmm:

It always puzzles me that posters who always use AMS or another continental hub are able to assert that LHR is a hellhole, contrary to user polls which rate T5 in particular very highly!

I would say that people prefer other airports because they are better than Heathrow.

The idea that Heathrow is it for the UK and we must use it is clearly not being listened to by millions of passengers around the UK who no longer need/wish to use it.
The reality is there are much better airports to travel via if a direct option is not available.
Another issue that Heathrow has is the incumbent BA which is quite simply not a particularly good airline anymore.
Especially for First/Business class passengers where BA has been well and truly left behind.
That makes Heathrow less attractive because they are the biggest operator and as such passengers will fly via somewhere else to get better service. Especially East Bound.

I totally agree with you I assume most of those that refer to LHR as a 'hell hole' have not used the airport for a very long time as both Terminal 2 and Terminal 5 are probably two of the best airport terminals in the world and Terminal 4 is a far greater experience than it was ten years ago.

These people that call LHR a 'hell hole' just make the same statement time and time again without having probably used the airport in recent years.

LGW and LHR are both easy to get to and the fact that this argument continues is ridiculous as it all depends from what direction your coming from or if your traveling by car or public transport, for an example where I live in Southampton in Hampshire LHR is 55 miles and takes approximately one hour and LGW 70 miles away and takes about one hour and 20 mins, STN being a lot further and my third choice is 123 miles away and doable in less than two hours.

Seems everyone moans about traveling distance to LGW and LHR but personally it doesn't concern me as I find the commute very easy.

I fly to the US a couple of times a year and I never use Heathrow, i always go via Amsterdam from Cardiff. I don't use Amsterdam because it's a better airport, I use it because it's more convenient and generally more cheaper for me to fly via Amsterdam from Cardiff. I'm sure Heathrow is a nice airport.

Not really, but in turn you might be surprised at the number of passengers in Western Europe who head to/from LHR rather than trek to the likes of CDG or other large Western European airports.... I suspect that for the leisure travellers in Europe at least ticket price/getting a good deal trumps other factors...

Canberra97


You may well be right. Due to a combination of circumstances I found myself in T4 recently and didn't recognise the place as the lightless airless box I used to work out of a few years back, as for LHR being a hell hole- as others have said from an infrastructure/facilities POV has certainly improved in recent years and continues to do

Have to say that if going long-haul and paying out of my own pocket the cost of APD on a Business Class ticket out of the UK makes a trip via AMS or CDG well worth it

We traveled for 60% of the LHR cost to/from Oz last year - not all APD - less demand for sure but still.............

And now the BBC

Heathrow expansion: is MP opposition growing? - BBC News

somebody is giving ministers wiggle room!

Heathrow critics say revised figures have 'trashed' original case for expansion

And even The Torygraph leads the charge with a headline that "case for Heathrow is trashed"

No, it is an assertion that LHR will never expand (in any significant way) from what it is now. The combination of well documented events over the last 30 years, coupled with the decline of the £/Britain is what drives my view. Whilst the low pound might bring some advantages, they will only be short term.

As I said, I also think that any changes made now, however dramatic, will not change a thing.

APD wll kill it. Also don't forget MAN is a great hub with good transport links and a huge catchment area. Don't like LHR.

Not mentioned so far is that whenever operational constraints occur at LHR, whether it is due to an incident or the weather, it is, in my experience, the regional shuttle flights that BA will cancel first, leaving regional passengers connecting to long haul high and dry. This happened to me in poor weather one winter travelling from MAN to LHR and on to the mid-east.

So I avoid LHR and much prefer AMS, then FRA or the ME outfits for long haul from MAN. CDG I also find a 'difficult' airport to make a transfer at.

Of course expansion at LHR may mean that the cancelling of BA shuttle flights first goes away.

Post 137 has LHR having 122 Westboud daily scheduled flight. The comparable MAN numbers is around 11 legacy scheduled (AA,AC,SQ,UA,VS). Even when you throw in TCX and TOM, it's not even close. MAN is a great airport, but it is not a hub in any meaningful sense of the world, it has no based hub and spoke carrier.
APD has been around for ages and has slowed the rate of growth but it's not reasonable to go as far as you suggest.

In Oban
Last time I was through LHR T5 was 14 months ago while connecting off an inbound flight from South America only to be told that my connecting flight to MAN had been cancelled due to "operational reasons", but not to worry we were going to be bused up the M6. You do not want to hear what I said about this.
That was both my first BA flight in a number of years and the first time I had used LHR since about 2009. Needless to say my experiance that day and the average to poor BA service on the flight has clouded my judjment re LHR and BA, and I have not returned since to either. T5 is ok but nothing that great, and as others have said the resident carrier (BA) is also no longer what it was, in my admitted now very limited experiance of them.

My biggest gripe at LHR is the difficulty in transferring terminals. Twice I've recently connected BA to BA to find it's T5 to T3. Both occasions the transfers took almost 2 hours gate to gate- which is pants. How can you build a terminal (T5) that isn't even big enough on day 1?
As has already been said, any slightest glitch and the regional connections get chopped.
Give me AMS any day.

A lot of the arguments above that are supposed to be against expansion at LHR are actually arguments for it.

1.Because of the physical restrictions of the site.
2. BA had to close the LGW hub due to unsustainable losses and so a swathe of long haul, (South America and part Africa) was moved back to LHR
BAA and BA had initially expected the BA operation to be smaller.

The planning process is the reason T5 is on so many floors, they had to build up.

Not if expansion cannot be undertaken economically.

Well that's what the revised scheme has been all about isn't it?

How much do they need to cut from the plans before it becomes acceptable?

The fundamental issue is government spend on surface access and underwriting the private investment (which essentially ties the governments hands over not approving LGW runway 2).

''Heathrow, hell-hole''
People who still use this kind of language haven't been there for quite a while and possibly don't get to fly much beyond the two weeks in Benidorm.
T5 and T2 are pretty good and certainly much much nicer and more user-friendly than either T1 or T3 at Manchester.
Changing terminals at LHR though should be avoided at all cost.

The main reasons I don't use LHR as much as I used to are:
1) There's not as much need to - plenty of options from my home airport of MAN
2) The decline of BA as a carrier of choice: Short-haul: probably as good as Easyjet but think they are superior (not a good mix) Long-haul is incredibly average and since they have started charging to choose seats EVEN IN BUSINESS CLASS, I have tended to avoid as a matter of principle.
3) The risk of a connecting shuttle being canceled at the drop of a hat is another powerful reason to avoid BA.

But overall Heathrow is not a 'hell-hole' - people need to update their social references. CDG is a far far worse experience IMO.