Mass airline passenger imbalance.

[unmanned transport]

Major world air carriers have created a major imbalance for international travellers by converging into LHR and not into an international hub in Continental Europe.

A major international hub for Europe needs to be created at CDG or FRA; reducing the traffic into LHR which is located on an small offshore island from the Continental Europe.

This would reduce congestion at an old two runway airport such as LHR is by not having to shuttle passengers over to the Continent.

[jumpseater]

Ah the fishing seasons started early I see, hope you've got a big net!

[5711N0205W]

and there was me thinking this topic might be an interesting case of an aircraft loaded with fatties on one side and skinnies on the other.

No apology for the non PC terminology.

However against my better judgement and rising to the bait I think AMS and CDG do pretty well as hub airports and should only do more so with the AF / KLM merger.

[pwalhx]

In may naivety I actually thought our tiny little island was ideally place to be a hub between the Americas and Europe (or beyond). However I do agree use Manchester rather than Heathrow it's much more pleasant.

[niknak]

I agree that Man may be preferable to Paris or Germany if you actually want to go to the Uk, but pleasant? Not a chance!

Birmingham, EMA, STN and Luton are more accessible and on the whole, nicer airports to travel from.

[WHBM]

Well I think most major airports round the world that have services to London also have some service to Paris and Frankfurt.

But guess what, more people want to go to London than to those other two.

Naa-naa-na-na-naa Paris and Frankfurt !!

[nickmanl]

Not being funny here, but what difference does it make for example if an Air India jet leaves say Delhi bound for JFK and stops off in London other than Frankfurt or CDG? Nothing!

Airlines use LHR because it serves funnily enough, London the biggest city in Europe (I think!!)

If people wanted to be shuttled over to the continent they can do so from London, like they would have to do so from FRA of CDG.

Or if they want to go to Frankfurt or Paris I'm sure they could fly direct from a major city in whatever continent they are flying from!

Doesn't Frankfurt serve more destinations than Heathrow anyway?

[unmanned transport]

Off hand I can think of about 40 international carriers that could avoid LHR and offload their pax on the Continent. This would sure alleviate the delays at LRH. A heck of a lot less shuttling going on betwen the Island and the Continent.

[speedbird_heavy]

But the UK is usually the first European contry to be over flown (after ireland) and if I wanted to fly from the US or Canada to the UK with say Air India, I wouldn't be happy having to fly to Deutchland first when I just flew over my homeland.

[nickmanl]

You are making it sound like LHR is the only major hub in the world to have delays! Every hub has them!

"less shuttling between the island and the continent"

Does it really matter if passengers fly to Frankfurt, board a plane and say fly to say Luxembourg then if they flew to Heathrow and board a plane to Luxembourg! It doesn't make a difference if you fly over water or land unless you crash.

[The SSK]

Think of an overseas city (any one will do).

Imagine that the long-haul travel demand at that city to/from other destinations could be expressed as a ranking list, with the most popular at the top and the one-passenger-a-week at the bottom.

We're talking demand here, not the existence of air services.

You can bet that London will be top of the list at most of the world's major cities. Paris would come top mainly in the francophone Africa markets.

Now translate demand into flights and hey presto, you've got more services at London than at the other big cities.

More service equals more connecting possibilities, which means more service...

[unmanned transport]

There are too many international carriers hubbing into LHR. resulting in this traffic not being balanced among major European cities.

[Notso Fantastic]

edited for personal attack.

[terrier21]

Europe has taken enough from us up the traffic to keep the economy moving!!!

'Vive le francais' my arse!!!

[TangoZulu]

Unmanned transport

You mention some 40 carriers which could apparently "off-load" their passengers into Continental Europe instead of LHR. I am sure this is possible, but the question mentioned several times above is why would they do that?

Essentially airlines are no different to any other business - they provide supply to meet demand. Therefore it would seem more people want to travel to London than some other cities in Europe.

This is a reflection on the realities of economics - nothing more than that. Given the pressure on all airlines these days it is very unlikely they fly to London instead of CDG/FRA beacuase they want to - simply because thats where the demand is and hence where they may make money!

[unmanned transport]

You make very good logical points TZ.

I just wonder how LHR stacks up against other European airports with regards to holding time prior to landing. Someone must have a handle on these stats.

[unmanned transport]

It amazes me that the small island nation of the UK which is less than half the size of France over here, has the market cornered for international airlines.

[Cyrano]

A hub which serves n destinations can theoretically offer a maximum of n*(n-1) connecting city-pair routings (this assumes of course that the timings work and that the detour factor via the hub is sensible for all the city pairs, assumptions which are not the case in reality but which set an upper bound).

If half of those n destinations are reallocated to a second hub, each hub will now offer (n/2)*((n-1)/2) city-pair routings, i.e. a quarter of the previous total. Two hubs, so altogether there are now half as many city-pair connection options as with one hub.

Of course there are many reasons for limiting hub size (all manner of diseconomies of scale, delays, political pressures, etc.) but in terms of pure connectivity, the bigger the better. "Balancing" traffic between hubs means spreading the passengers more thinly, which means using smaller aircraft or lower frequencies (and there may be competitive advantages to this, but it's a different argument to "boo hoo, yours is bigger than mine, that's not fair.")

Consider what this means if you are a small airline which wants to start a new service to one or other hub to feed/defeed connecting passengers. All else being equal, you'll choose the largest hub
because it gives you the most connections. Your new service will make the largest hub even larger, so there'll be a positive feedback effect.

Of course, not all the passengers in the hub airport are connecting, so a big successful hub typically has a very large proportion of origin/destination traffic too. I think that's one of the factors that's always made it difficult for Swissair/Swiss (and to a lesser extent KLM, and others) to build their hubs to competitive levels.