Movements by airport 2004

[Dockjock]

Interesting stats here; of the busiest 30 airports in the world, 23 are in the USA.

2004 aircraft movements (http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_content.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-5-212-231_9_25__)

[TheOddOne]

Dockjock,

Thanks for the link, interesting stuff.

What's fascinating for me is that although LHR is well down the list for a/c movements, much lower than CDG, for instance, LHR are #3 in the world for pax movements while CDG are only #8.
LGW is 19th for pax but don't even appear on the movements table.

I'd like to think that it's because we're much more efficient as airports; we pack more pax in per movement and of course we don't waste real estate either.

I do realise that some airport's historical hub & spoke operations using much smaller feeder a/c mean that they are saddled with a high movement rate and low load factors. LHR have a far greater predominance of 747 operations than, for instance, LGW.

Cheers,
The Odd One

[Oshkosh George]

I did notice,when you follow that link,then switch to pax information,you then see 2003 pax figures,but probably fairly close to 2004 figures.

I wonder why it doesn't show the 2004 story for pax?

[PaperTiger]

I can see the 2004 passenger (http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_content.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-5-212-218-222_9_25__) stats there.

One of the reasons the movements are biased towards US airports is that private/GA are included in the stats and such operations are essentially unrestricted (but expen$$$ive) at non-slot US airports. Diddyjets (RJs) are another.

[jabird]

"I'd like to think that it's because we're much more efficient as airports; we pack more pax in per movement and of course we don't waste real estate either."

There must be a tradeoff here:

Larger aircraft = better fuel economy (generally), but:

More congested airport (on ground and in airspace) = more fuel burnt taxiing, more stacking, and more fuel wasted in cars getting to and from the airport.

Hub airport => high land values => then becomes more expensive to expand facilities (in effect, LHR is victim of own success).

Also, airports act as a magnet for residential development, which in turn can mean more nimbys to pacify.

Then again, hub airport => greater population density => greater ability to support public transport, which theoritically reduces land demand, and uses less energy to move people. In reality, my understanding is that the LHR express has only increased public transport modal share by 1%, as most of its users have been taken off the tube & buses.

Consider aswell that LHR's two main runways point directly at the centre of London - not good in terms of noise footprint, and also the high density of development makes public transport improvements astronomically expensive - £1.8bn for LHR exp iirc.

Move airport out of town - e.g. DEN, then development is followed by a massive corridor of "urban sprawl", whereas, ironically, the old Stapleton site itself gets revamped as a high density "smart growth" project.

There's lots of airports out there which claim to be "green" by using electric buses and recycling newspapers etc, but I'd love to see a study done showing the actual amount of fuel used to transport passenger x from a to b for the whole journey - say London to Rome, and comparing LHR to FCO with STN to CIA. Has anything like this ever been done?