PARIS - CDG

[rotornut]

The May edition of Air Canada's enRoute magazine speculates there will be a new terminal at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport for the A-380. ?

[The SSK]

Earlier this year I participated in a conference at which the Planning Director for Aeroports de Paris gave a presentation on how fleet developments would impact airport design and operation (not specifically Paris and not exclusively A380).

He placed CDG in the category of 70s/80s airports designed around the B747 which would need ‘significant’ rather than ‘large’ adjustments to accommodate the A380. Per-airport investment was in the range €50-150 million, I don’t think that would pay for an all-new terminal.

Incidentally the terminal’s ability to handle the passenger load is far less critical than runway/taxiway and taxiway/taxiway separations, also runway and taxiway width, size of holding points… Also stand size, will an A380 stand take up 2 existing stands, or cause adjoining stands to be downgraded from say B747 to B767 size? Such things are crucial for the economics of the terminal.

The issue is not just the A380, the B787/A350 will carry a B767-size load but take up a B777-size stand.

[unmanned transport]

Paris, the world's most important air hub
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Posted: 2352 GMT (0752 HKT)

Paris is more important than London as a hub for air travel.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The city of light is also the city of flight, says a new study listing Paris as the most important connecting point for international air travel.

Anchorage, Alaska, places a surprising second on the list, followed by London, Singapore and New York. The ranking reflects each cities' importance in the world's air network - which is not the same as the busiest cities for connections.

The connections among 3,883 communities with airports around the world were analyzed by a team of researchers led by Luis Amaral of Northwestern University. The results appear in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The air transportation network is like the Internet, the study concluded, with networks and hubs funneling traffic around the world.

The findings are important in understanding the flow of travelers and in studying the potential movement of new diseases, Amaral said.

In addition, the analysis could help regulators determine airports where more competition is needed. And study of the network could even shed light on the functions of biological networks within the human body, according to Amaral, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

A traveler can get from any of the cities to any other with an average of 4.4 flights, and more than half the communities are connected with four flights or fewer, the researchers found.

The most difficult air route? Getting from Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands to Wasu, Papua-New Guinea, requires 15 flights.

The researchers found the busiest locations are not always the most important.

Anchorage, for example, has nonstop flights to 39 other cities, far fewer than the 242 cities connected to London nonstop.

But Anchorage edges London in a vital measure called centrality -- a rating of the shortest paths connecting any two cities that involve a transfer at a particular city.

It's centrality that boosts the importance of cities such as Anchorage and Port Moresby, Papua-New Guinea, which serve as connection hubs between many other airports and international connections, the researchers explained.

Alaska, for example, has many airports, but most connect only to other Alaskan airports. Only a few connect to the "lower 48" states. There are political constraints on flights directly between most of Alaska and Canada, even to cities close to the border.

Thus, getting from most of Alaska to somewhere outside the state often involves going through Anchorage, boosting that city's centrality rating.

Similarly, many Pacific islands are connected by air, and Port Moresby is the hub that links lots of them to the outside, placing that community seventh on the worldwide list. That ranks behind Los Angeles but ahead of such busy places as Frankfurt, Tokyo and Moscow.

Paris and London benefit from their nation's colonial pasts, with many flights from Africa and Asia going to those cities, where travelers transfer to other planes to go on.

Indeed, they are the top cities in the world for nonstop flights to other places. Paris leads with flights to 250 other cities, followed by London, 242; Frankfurt, 237; Amsterdam, 192 and Moscow, 186.

The two busiest airports in the U.S. are in Chicago and Atlanta. The study ranked Chicago 13th on the worldwide centrality list and 6th for nonstop flights, with connections to 184 cities. Atlanta ranked 29th for centrality and 8th in connections, with flights to 172 cities.

The study analyzed 531,574 flights operated by 800 airlines worldwide from November. 1 to November. 7, 2000. While the data are four years old, the researchers say the current worldwide airport network is virtually identical to the one at that time.

[16 blades]

Un Francais does some research to find out where the centre of the universe is........finds it in Paris...

..now that DOES surprise me....

16B

[Dani]

...once again a statistic without practical relevance...

Achorage? Port Moresby???

[finessemax]

16 blades, does "Luis Amaral of Northwestern University" really sound french to you? I suggest you should travel.

By the way, with a world so full of morons, who would want to be at the center of this universe?

[vfenext]

So now French ATC have an even greater argument to speak only french. If you don't understand then tough! Am I the only one who thinks the number of charts for the arrivals into CDG is ridiculous? Why make it one chart when you can make it three! Still if it's the center of the universe then the arrival is bound to be over-comlicated.

[The SSK]

The most difficult air route? Getting from Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands to Wasu, Papua-New Guinea, requires 15 flights. Can't resist a challenge, now where's my anorak?...

Mount Pleasant to Santiago, LA990 every Saturday
Santiago to Sydney, LA801 4 times a week
Sydney to Port Moresby, PX006 twice a week

Ah, now here's a problem, according to the OAG, Wasu is no longer served. However the team of researchers admit that the data is four years old. Four years ago, Wasu was served direct from Lae, which was served direct from ... Port Moresby.

So, that makes five flights.
Where do I go for my prize?

[Turn It Off]

I think you collect your prize from spotters lounge desk jockey!!!!



:D :cool: :ok:

[Pax Vobiscum]

If you go to the original paper (quite technical, but available in PDF at Amaral Group's Website (http://amaral.chem-eng.northwestern.edu/)), they state:

The farthest cities in the network are Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands and Wasu, Papua New Guinea: To get from one city to the other, one needs to take 15 different flights. From Mount Pleasant, one can fly to Punta Arenas, Chile, and from there fly to some hubs in Latin America. At the other end of the path, from Wasu one needs to fly to Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), which requires a unique sequence of eight flights. In the center of the path, between Punta Arenas and Port Moresby, six different flights are needed. In contrast to what happens the ends of the path, in the central region of the path there are hundreds of different flight combinations, all of them connecting Punta Arenas and Port Moresby in six steps. I think they need the help of desk jockey!

The anomalous conclusion may result from their ignoring traffic volumes, but even so I find it hard to believe! As an incomplete (but persuasive) example, my 'Star Alliance' PDA timetable lists 63 destinations from LHR and 40 from CDG.

[colegate]

London, any airport, does not constitute anything like the largest hub in the world and probably never will. But London is by far the world's busiest air transport market. It is around 40% bigger than its nearest competitor, New York. London is not a large hub because flights there are not scheduled to provide connections within a short space of time across a single airline's network, let alone within a single terminal.

The biggest hub by far is Atlanta, which happens to be the busiest airport in the world. It is Delta's network there of deliberately planned connections that make it such a busy airport.

Paris comes nowhere near ATL in terms of genuine hub operations.

The last time I looked at interlining traffic across major European hubs the most important by far was Frankfurt where 71% of the traffic was made up of LH/LH connections. At LHR BA/BA connections made up around 30% of traffic there.

[ALFRED]

quote vfenext ....Am I the only one who thinks the number of charts for the arrivals into CDG is ridiculous?...

Hi vfenext.
Here in France, we use to say :" better was available but it was cheaper !"

As you could know, our red taper are very eager to spoil our money in useless drills or bridges or airport jetaways...
They are not here to make money but to burn it, otherwise, they will have less next year:{

[unmanned transport]

Paris leads with nonstop flights to 250 other cities, followed by London, 242; Frankfurt, 237; Amsterdam, 192 and Moscow, 186.

[Globaliser]

Now come on, we're being far too hard on these academics. They came up with a set of criteria and have now doubt told us, as accurately as they were able to, how the airports of the world fit those criteria.

The facts that:- The criteria are s*d all use in the real world; and The researchers didn't find very accurate data;are just the hallmarks of academic research ...

Incidentally, I understand that Port Moresby to Wasu can still be done in two sectors:-Milne Bay Airlines flies from Port Morsebry twice a month to Wasu. You have to call to book as they are not on the GDS systems. It involves a change of planes in the Westernland from a Dash 8 to a Twin Otter. The contact for them is PO Box 170,
Boroko 111, NCD
Contact: Bruce Alabaster
Telephone: 325 2011
Facsimile: 325 2219:D

[toothpic]

John Lennon International in Liverpool used to have the biggest hubs in the world.. but some b****r nicked them... :)

[Pax Vobiscum]

Nice one Globaliser!

I still find it hard to believe that Paris has more direct flight destinations than London (unless they're mostly internal, and to Martinique or St Pierre et Miquelon). My copy of OAG has 24 pages of flights originating in London against 18 for Paris.

When I used to work for a french company (palindromic insurer), it used to cause great amusement that the quickest way for HQers to visit their assets in Oz required a swift hop to LHR as the first leg.

[visibility3miles]

You didn't include the last line in the story, which was:

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

One point of the study was to track the most likely routes for disease to spread around the globe.

The findings are important in understanding the flow of travelers and in studying the potential movement of new diseases, Amaral said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/05/24/bt.paris.hub.ap/

A new flu, coming to an airport near you...

[WATABENCH]

According to Hippies and pill popping ravers, the centre of the world with regard to magnetic pulses is actually IBZ.
And should the world be destroyed the only surviving place would be the white isle!!! - Speaks volumes really LOL:E

[Ignition Override]

Chicagos O'Hare Airport (ORD) was the busiest hub, however many years ago. It still seems to me that it is the busiest. The Chicago Approach/Dep. controllers also must fit in Chicago Midway's (MDW) traffic, which is very close by.

But in Atlanta (ATL), all of the runways are parallel to each other 08L,R, 09L,R-but this creates problems with the entire operation depending upon "hold short" clearances :(. ASA (no longer at DFW) and AirTran also have their hubs there.

[thefareguru]

While my transliterated English expression does not work in French, similarly does this survey seem a trifle pseudo.

I've been in the travel business, working from YVR for over 20 years. Their references contain no references to GDSs, and I wonder if data from charters like the one to BJL and GOI were included. Sure France has a bunch of ratbag flights to the parts of Africa they ruined, but for this to take the place away from London [in my opinion!] as the centre of the aviation world, the city with the most choices, let's just say that my doubt level increases exponentially every minute that I think about it.

Has anyone got a link to the city pairs that they offer in evidence, or does one indeed exist?

[unmanned transport]

CDG has much more room for expansion than does LHR.
As well, there is less NIMBY influence at CDG than LHR.

In future CDG will continue to grow whereas LHR will stagnate due to traffic saturation because of it's two runways.

Why fly into an island airport such as LHR when one can avoid an shuttle flight by flying directly to a continent via CDG?

[thefareguru]

unmanned transport, with all due respect, the survey is about cities rather than individual airports that serve them; this to me means that we are comparing the basic 5 LON airports [LHR, LGW, STN, LCY and LTN] vs. CDG and ORY, and you can have LBG for the sake of argument.

In my mind, I was arguing 'cumulative' LON vs. 'cumulative' PAR. Does not the survey indicate city totals rather than airport totals?

[Pax Vobiscum]

You can read the full report here (http://amaral.chem-eng.northwestern.edu/) (click on the first item of the "In the Spotlight" section) - a 550K PDF file. It is indeed based on city totals rather than individual airports.

The report describes Paris as the 'most central' city in the worldwide air transportation network, but what they actually mean by this is rather opaque. I think it may have something to do with the number of flights that route via Paris in comparison to those that originate/terminate there (hence Anchorage in second place).

Their data source was a 2000 edition of the OAG MAX database (I guess OAG wanted to charge $$$ for a more current version).

[Skylion]

Sorry, but on any measure you can think of Anchorage is absolutely nowhere in this game, ( it has very few international scheduled flights and all but a tiny fraction of those between the USA, Europe and Far East have overflown it for at least the last 20 years) and that must throw doubts on the validity of this whole study. The USA hubs, while the busiest, are predominantly domestic to domestic whereas those in the rest of the world are either domestic/international or international/international. LHR is dominant in comparaison to CDG by its higher frequencies and spread of services through the day to almost anywhere significant . These mean it doesnt have to schedule as a hub of waves- its simply that the chances are that wherever,- other than some "niche" destinations,- you want to go, the availability of a choice of flights into or out of Europe is almost always going to be higher through LHR than CDG , and nowhere else even comes close. If you add LGW and other "London" airports to the equation ,the London dominance is even more overwhelming.

[hugel]

I had the misfortune to be a passenger in CDG Terminal 2B at the weekend and was amazed to find the inside of the concrete terminal to be almost complete devoid of lighting. It was so dark that in my opinion it constituted a hazard , simply walking through the concours. Before I write to the airport manager, does anyone have any idea why the lighting is so bad ? (Single small ceiling pin spotlights spaced about every 12m)

hugel

[apaddyinuk]

Poor design is my only guess. I think they went more for WOW factor in its overall architecture as opposed to practicality!

[GXEYE]

Hi

I travelled through 2D Friday and didn't notice any darkness, but then my eyes were just about closed anyway!!!

[RED WINGS]

Always reminds me of a 1960's multistory car park

[nivsy]

Darkness around the terminal possibly encourages the ridiculous amount of pick pockets around CDG. A colleague had purse swiped from her hand bag minutes after arriving at CDG(possibly at baggage reclaim so be careful). Passport/work pass/empty bag all found my the ever vigilant (ha ha ha :eek:) local airport police who did littlemore than shoulder shrug a lot and eat something that stank rather than monitor the heaps of CCTV screens in the airport police station!


Nivsy

[fa2fi]

Hey. A while back I'm sure I saw what looked like the outline of a Concorde on the ground on the south side of the airport near the perimeter road. It looked like large stones set out to form a massive shape of the aircraft and it was pointing west. I saw this on google maps, but when I look now it is not there. Does anyone know what happened to it?

[Fairdealfrank]

Paris, the world's most important air hub.
Paris, the world's most important air hub
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Posted: 2352 GMT (0752 HKT)

Paris is more important than London as a hub for air travel.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The city of light is also the city of flight, says a new study listing Paris as the most important connecting point for international air travel.

Anchorage, Alaska, places a surprising second on the list, followed by London, Singapore and New York. The ranking reflects each cities' importance in the world's air network - which is not the same as the busiest cities for connections.

The connections among 3,883 communities with airports around the world were analyzed by a team of researchers led by Luis Amaral of Northwestern University. The results appear in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The air transportation network is like the Internet, the study concluded, with networks and hubs funneling traffic around the world.

The findings are important in understanding the flow of travelers and in studying the potential movement of new diseases, Amaral said.

In addition, the analysis could help regulators determine airports where more competition is needed. And study of the network could even shed light on the functions of biological networks within the human body, according to Amaral, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

A traveler can get from any of the cities to any other with an average of 4.4 flights, and more than half the communities are connected with four flights or fewer, the researchers found.

The most difficult air route? Getting from Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands to Wasu, Papua-New Guinea, requires 15 flights.

The researchers found the busiest locations are not always the most important.

Anchorage, for example, has nonstop flights to 39 other cities, far fewer than the 242 cities connected to London nonstop.

But Anchorage edges London in a vital measure called centrality -- a rating of the shortest paths connecting any two cities that involve a transfer at a particular city.

It's centrality that boosts the importance of cities such as Anchorage and Port Moresby, Papua-New Guinea, which serve as connection hubs between many other airports and international connections, the researchers explained.

Alaska, for example, has many airports, but most connect only to other Alaskan airports. Only a few connect to the "lower 48" states. There are political constraints on flights directly between most of Alaska and Canada, even to cities close to the border.

Thus, getting from most of Alaska to somewhere outside the state often involves going through Anchorage, boosting that city's centrality rating.

Similarly, many Pacific islands are connected by air, and Port Moresby is the hub that links lots of them to the outside, placing that community seventh on the worldwide list. That ranks behind Los Angeles but ahead of such busy places as Frankfurt, Tokyo and Moscow.

Paris and London benefit from their nation's colonial pasts, with many flights from Africa and Asia going to those cities, where travelers transfer to other planes to go on.

Indeed, they are the top cities in the world for nonstop flights to other places. Paris leads with flights to 250 other cities, followed by London, 242; Frankfurt, 237; Amsterdam, 192 and Moscow, 186.

The two busiest airports in the U.S. are in Chicago and Atlanta. The study ranked Chicago 13th on the worldwide centrality list and 6th for nonstop flights, with connections to 184 cities. Atlanta ranked 29th for centrality and 8th in connections, with flights to 172 cities.

The study analyzed 531,574 flights operated by 800 airlines worldwide from November. 1 to November. 7, 2000. While the data are four years old, the researchers say the current worldwide airport network is virtually identical to the one at that time.


This sounds like a variation on "central place theory" which will be familiar to students of geography. Some towns/cities have an importance completely unrelated to their size/population for various reasons, and will many more amenities and facilities much larger settlements.

There many reasons for this, history and location almost always have something to do with it. For example, many small towns have cathedrals illustrating their importance in medieval times and consequently remain administrative centres although their size suggests that the bigger town downn the road should be.

So it is, apparently, with airports.



Why fly into an island airport such as LHR when one can avoid an shuttle flight by flying directly to a continent via CDG?


Because CDG is an awful ****hole and getting progressively worse. Unlike LHR, CDG is not getting better. The argument would be better made if AMS had been the example rather than CDG.





unmanned transport, with all due respect, the survey is about cities rather than individual airports that serve them; this to me means that we are comparing the basic 5 LON airports [LHR, LGW, STN, LCY and LTN] vs. CDG and ORY, and you can have LBG for the sake of argument.

In my mind, I was arguing 'cumulative' LON vs. 'cumulative' PAR. Does not the survey indicate city totals rather than airport totals?


Don't forget SEN for London airports and BVA and POX for Paris airports,
'cumulative' LON is much bigger than 'cumulative' PAR, and bigger than 'cumulative' NYC.