So half the airport terminals are OK, the other half T3 and T4 are not so OK. Overall, an OK airport, not really good enough for our supposed UK 'hub'.

Same can be said for expansion at LGW, all bias and subjective!

You'll be surprised. I have several friends who I am fortunate enough to use their staff travel including several major long haul carriers and one loco. LHR APD on stand by fares is at least DOUBLE that of MAN, EDI, CDG, AMS, GVA and FRA.

Not really, I am talking about comments such as this

As well as other posts about how bad they think LHR is now or was once upon a time.

We should not develop the airport because it needs developing is not really an argument against it. Likewise, the fact BA cancels domestic flights at the first sign of trouble is not a reason not to build a SH runway and encourage more domestic flights but an argument for it.

Talking about environmental air pollution is also a bit misleading without comparing against the extra pollution created now from aircraft holding and the general reduction likely to come, as a result of cleaner vehicles and aircraft from mid 2030's when this project would likely be completed.

Projected surface access costs too need to be taken in context with the life of the project and against the existing cost of those improvements that would likely happen even if the new runway didn't go ahead.

I believe most of the pollution is caused by cars and trucks, not by a/c.

Fly Quiet, but not Clean any longer
 

Heathrow has changed the name of its flagship environmental monitoring programme - previously called "Fly Quiet & Clean", it's now "Fly Quiet & Green".

Sadly, the change doesn't coincide with any attempt to clean up the stats, so again they give the usual distorted view of airlines' performance.

Bizarrely, Air India gets the Number One slot (which, using Heathrow's own rules, should actually belong to Qantas), mainly because AI's poor performance for track-keeping and NOx emissions hasn't been factored into the scoring.

Airlines entitled to feel aggrieved with the latest published results include China Southern, unfairly relegated 14 places from the Number 8 slot that its performance actually merits, and Virgin Atlantic, down 12 positions from its rightful 19th place. One wonders what those carriers have done (or failed to do) that has earned Heathrow's disapproval.

Air Malta, on the other hand, seem to be particularly favoured this time around - despite its performance only meriting a position in the bottom half of the league table, at 27th, it gets a 10-place hike up the rankings to 17th.

And strangest of all, Air France and Air Canada, who should be in tied place based on how they performed in each of the measured criteria, end up 9 places apart in the league table. Pour encourager les autres, presumably. :O

https://www.heathrowflyquietandgreen.com/

If POINTLESS doesn't cut the mustard one could always switch to Parliament TV for a similar offering.

http://www.cityam.com/276804/mps-grill-department-transport-representatives-plans/amp

Only in the UK does everything fall over at the slightest hint of weather being less than optimal.

Not true. Looking at EDI, it seems that Schipol and Eindhoven are closed, not surprising given the forecast.

At least they would be a bit more prepared for the weather, it always seems to catch the UK off guard every year without fail.

Looks like schiphol is up and running though, but delays between 1 and 5 hrs

It did appear to be a specific problem to BA AND T5.

Simon Calder was on TV suggesting all other airlines were operating with only 1 or 2 cancellations.

Another poster on another thread (about a BA flight returning to Berlin on Sunday) has pointed out that in his case there were problems with T2 and Eurowings.

TBH Simon Calder is sort of stating the obvious - if for whatever reason there is a major problem at LHR then it’s a given that BA will be the most effected and chances are T5 won’t be a pretty sight....In any event I’d be interested to see the stats for Sunday for all operators at the airport.

BTW the last time I operated out of LHR with BA in significant snow a few years back we got away OK, albeit about 2 hours late. The last time I actually ended up cancelling and night stopping due to snow was out of a US eastern seaboard airport......not that that is evidence of anything other than there is a danger of making the assumption (happily fuelled by the media) that it is only ever LHR/UK that cannot cope with “bad” weather.....

10 busiest carriers:

Airline, Arrs/Deps Sun 3 Dec, Arrs/Deps Sun 10 Dec
BA 327/332 163/150
EI 21/20 15/15
AA 19/19 19/17
SK 19/17 15/13
VS 18/18 19/17
LH 17/16 11/10
UA 15/15 15/15
DL 12/12 12/11
EW 12/12 4/4
LX 12/12 5/5

DR - I knew I could rely on you..

Ok, 'cos it's early It's been short night and I'm a bit fik...that's the achieved? - as in BA got "327 in/332 out" on Sunday 3rd..."163 in/150 out" Sunday 10th...

Many thanks as always...

Yes, actual movements, I don't have access to the planned programme.

The HAL airport publicity machine seems very quiet. So whose at fault? :confused:

You know the deafult is: If a company is saying nothing - then it's covering up. They know that ANY statement can be thrown back at them and de-icing and other aspects of despatch inevitably involve HAL. Best to say nowt unless forced.

Thanks Dave Reid, these figures should really be put to the main newspapers to ask Alex Cruz for an explanation. The full house by Virgin is particularly notable as their Heathrow operations are wholly based there as well.

As I understand it, de-icing is the responsibility of the handling agent, which includes provision of the personnel, kit and the fluid. There's no centralised deicing pad at Heathrow.

BA self-handle, presumably most of the others are handled by agents.

Excellent post by Dave Reid.

Had the news not been dominated by "real weather elsewhere " i suspect the media would have been all over this.

In fairness the deicing meltdown was squarely a BA one as it’s self handling. I wonder if the BA T3 operation fared any better?
Look at United and Virgin for example above, T3 and T2 have a lot more contingency now that T5 created more space once BA moved across. #irony

So what was going on at LHR this morning? I was taking some happy snaps down there and couldn't help noticing what seemed to be longer than usual gaps between arrivals, as much as 5 minute intervals at times. I looked at my app and saw there were no race course shaped tracks over Ockham, Bovingdon etc. It did look rather odd. Am I right in thinking this was due to some of BA's "get the aircraft back where it belongs" routines, following the inclement weather?

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.