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So the Tories have now told us that they want to scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, and build a new high speed rail route instead. Whatever the economic and environmental ramifications of this proposal, can it actually work?

In France, the TGV has certainly taken a massive chunk out of the domestic flights market, virtually wiping out flights between Paris and Lyons, and encouraging Marseilles airport to fight back by building the first dedicated budget terminal in Europe.

The train has already seen significant gains in market share on the London to Manchester route, whereas flights between London and Liverpool have also been chopped.

But could a single high speed rail route between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds really negate the need for a third runway at Heathrow? Or, given the current economic outlook and longer term environmental concerns, does that need still exist at all?

• News article & comment:

“A third runway at Heathrow would be a completely privately funded project, whereas building a new high-speed rail line between London and Leeds is going to require a minimum of £20 billion to get going, and we know how much these projects always overrun. This proposal contains an element of private funding, but around 4/5 of the cost will still come from the public purse.”

It looks like Ryanair have stopped offering cheap flights from Liverpool to Inverness for the upcoming winter season.

Ryanair are quite often very happy to say which routes don’t perform well, but this seems to be one they have let go of quietly. Unfortunately, when it comes to confirming these details, Ryanair’s website is one of the most cumbersome out there. There is no quick way of checking timetable details, so users have to scroll back and forth through the dates they are interested in finding flights for.

This is, I’m afraid, yet another example of Ryanair’s needless unhelpfulness. So in the time it takes me to write this blog, I have got as far as confirming that there are no flights between Wednesdays and Saturdays in November. OK - can now confirm this route doesn’t operate on any days in November. Checking back through Ryanair’s booking form confirms that these flights do indeed end on 26th October.

So, we can expect the usual questions about why a route which appears to have been popular, both with point to point travellers, and people making their own onward connections from Liverpool, has been axed.

Our understanding is that these flights were indeed relatively full. There is certainly room for competition on this route, as passengers who have got used to Ryanair’s cheap flights to Inverness will now have to make do with Eastern’s services from an alternative airport like Manchester or Birmingham.

The clue lies in the probable reason for Ryanair offering cheap Inverness flights in the first place. Budget airlines like Ryanair do everything they can to get the best usage out of their aircraft, and this process involves carefully matching up city combinations, so that each plane can perform a maximum number of “rotations” (out and back trips) in one day. Sometimes, the schedule results in a time slot of, let’s say, 2 1/2 hours, into which they need to fit a return trip.

We have always suspected that destinations like Inverness and Aberdeen suit Ryanair’s purposes in this respect very well. In the case of Ryanair’s Aberdeen flights, the “yields” (i.e. the revenue the airline earns for each passenger) seem notably above those for Inverness, so the route seems likely to stay - for the time being at least. In the case of Inverness, it looks like even if Ryanair were making money, they can now make more money by moving their aircraft around to serve other routes.

Flightmapping’s MD James Avery will be on BBC Radio CWR, in Annie Othen’s travel slot, from around 11:40pm tomorrow (Tuesday 19th June).

Topics set for discussion include:

• Summer 2007 travel opportunities from the Midlands - where the best bargains are.
• New flight routes for 2007.
• The impact of the recent government decision on Coventry Airport’s future.
• How the aviation industry is responding to its environmental critics.

As always, James promised to be on fighting form, so tune in for some interesting discussion.

My email is still downloading as I type this - all 57MB worth. Of course, there’s the usual varieties of Monday spam, but the real offender is 11MB worth of image attachments, courtesy of Easyjet, who now need to be dubbed as the web’s most un-email savvy PR office.

I’m not sure if there is a universal guideline for email attachments - I’ve previously worked on about 1MB, but there’s certainly no need to send me images this size - especially when (a) I already have them on a zip disk they gave me at the press conference, and (b) if I do use them, they will only end up as a tiny jpeg image on a news story - no more than 400 pixels wide. If I want more, I know where to find them.

Apart from this minor breach of netiquette, I think the Easyjet Ecojet is a very interesting concept, and will be back for more comment on it later. I just hope the Easyjet PR team think before sending out large attachments next time. This kind of initiative is always going to get a very welcome reception here at Flightmapping.com, but other media outlets, especially the doomsday-predicting Independent, and officially biased BBC are a lot less tolerant!

Whatever has gone wrong with Coventry Airport’s attempts to open up a new terminal, and offer flights for upto 2 million passengers each year, there is no point in trying to find a scapegoat. Considering that the airport’s current owners took over the lease from TUI on the apparent understanding that the second public inquiry would be a formality, this ruling must come as a tremendous blow to them.

Infact, Coventry Airport’s managing director, Chris Orphanou, has not exactly minced his words when commenting on the decision to the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

“I’m not from Coventry, but had I been from Coventry, I would probably have been creating World War Three today”

Well, I’m not sure if I’d say I’m from Coventry either - I happen to live here, but I’d consider myself to be “from” that other town just up the road - Leamington Spa, or Royal Leamington Spa to the snobs out there. So having seen this argument from both sides of the fence, I think that this is the crux of the problem.

Poor Coventry is surrounded by affluent Warwickshire, which will only deal on its own terms - just look at the history of Warwick University, for more details on this. Meanwhile, just up the road is Birmingham, which is still trying to cling to its claim of being Britain’s second city. Sorry Brum, but in terms of culture, sport, and of course transport, you lost that one to Manchester many moons ago. So time for a quote from my favourite band, with whom I share my name, and who also happen to eminate from Britain’s real second city:

“Stop stop talking about who’s to blame, when all that counts is how to change.” - James, Born of Frustration.

The decision has been made, and we have to live with it. For anyone directly employed at the airport, or who’s business depends on the airport, this is a hard blow to take, especially as we approach what should be a busy summer, not to mention the excitement of the new flights to Poland.

I have lived in this area for 29 of the 31 years I have spent on this planet. Prior to moving to Coventry, I lived in north Leamington. I also took a substantial interest in green issues when at university, so I think I can see this debate from most angles. 

I have repeatedly pointed out that Coventry Airport needs an intelligent surface access (ie ground transport) strategy. They need to innovate, and to turn this obvious weakness into a strength - just laying on a couple of buses doesn’t do this. They need to look at the shared taxi system used by Chiltern Trains at Bicester North (where parking constraints are a real problem), or they need to investigate whether or not Thomsonfly’s customer database can be used to offer this service as an add-on (hey, potential revenue earner here too).

I don’t buy the argument that mitigation wasn’t sufficient. If this was the case, surely the inspectorate could have imposed greater restrictions on the airport. This is to be expected anyway, as environmental concerns continue to grab more headlines. Let’s not forget that 1 million departures each year would have sent £10m to the treasury, yet nimbys tend to go strangely silent when asked if some of that income should go towards mitigation schemes.

Noise and air pollution will be a problem at any airport, but it doesn’t take a genius to glance at a map, and see that the residential areas around Birmingham Airport are a great deal more dense than those around Coventry.

I still believe that this difference in noise footprint more than equates for any alleged lack of public transport at Coventry Airport - especially as most of Coventry’s passengers are on leisure trips anyway. Let us not forget that, for all Birmingham’s talk about having a station on site, 4 out of 5 people using it still arrive there by private transport or taxi. As with many other UK airport’s, Birmingham’s proximity to the main London to Birmingham railway line can be put down to an accident of geography, rather than any deliberate foresight. However much I would like to see more people getting to and from airports by public transport, this should never be a reason for an airport to be refused the opportunity to expand.

So I think that the environmental reasons for the refusal of planning permission can and should be challenged, however much of a whipping stick the media like to beat the aviation industry with. Once those are given a fair weighting, I think that the case for moderate, controlled and mitigated expansion at Coventry - which is all anyone has ever asked for - is entirely reasonable, and consistent with the needs of the Midlands as a whole.

A couple of years back, I devoted a huge amount of time to defending Coventry Airport’s plans to launch more flights, and to cater for upto 2 million passengers per year.

Despite attempts by some of the anti-airport campaigners to suggest that I was doing this because I had commercial interests to protect, my reasons for getting involved boiled down to a simple belief that the airport’s plans were reasonable and moderate, and that they should be given full support.

It just happens to be that Flightmapping.com is based in Coventry, and that much of the opposition to the airport’s expansion plans was eminating from within the chattering classes of Warwick District, within which I had lived for many years. I have to give it to Warwick District Council, they are a tough bunch - much as though I completely disagree with the stance they have taken, their viewpoint has been vindicated - at least for now.

How different it might have been if the airport was in the boundaries of Coventry? I also can’t help wondering if the decision would have been the same, had TUI still maintained ownershop of the lease on the Coventry Airport site.

At some stage in the not to distant future, I will need to thoroughly digest the report, but I am still sensing that the grounds for refusal ultimately boil down to the presence of Birmingham Airport, rather than the inherent strength of local opposition. I expect that this is a combination of the pre-existence of Birmingham (for mainstream passenger purposes), the public transport provision that Birmingham offers, and its inherent political clout, rather than any individual reason - or grand conspiracy, as some commentators might suggest. I’ll leave the conspiracy theories to the government’s White Paper proposals to build a new airport near Rugby - an obvious political hoax if ever there was one!

Despite the obvious blow that the airport operators have just been dealt, this is far from over - there are appeals, and possible alternative submissions to think about. Meanwhile, the current terminal continues to operate, and to do so with planning permission.

I hope that the key political voices in Coventry will make their opinions known in the right places - shame on Jim Cunningham for caving in to the nimby arguments.

If a local shop of 70 years’ standing was refused planning permission to open a second checkout desk, on the grounds that there was a large supermarket with 12 desks, and plans to expand to 36 desks, just 120 yards away, there would be total outrage, and cries of bullying on the part of said supermarket. Yet shops also cause disturbances, albeit on a different scale. And don’t get me started on the nuisance going on outside a certain local pub last night!

I hope that people will sense a similar outrage over what has happened here, and that they will see through the political points scoring which is so easy to do these days in the name of the environment, when it is perfectly clear that there are other, far greater, vested interests at play.

The debate over aviation’s contribution to climate change and other environmental problems was well under way when I started Flightmapping.com almost 5 years ago. I’ve never been one to pretend that this isn’t a serious issue, but it does appear that most industry bigwigs are finally waking up to this.

Earlier this month, Leo Van Wijk, who is vice-chairman of Air France-KLM, the world’s biggest airline by turnover, lashed out at the annual IATA conference, claiming that the industry was doing too little, too late.

I have always felt that the cost of flights should cover the so-called “externalities” of pollution, and that this can still be done whilst making sure that aviation also make a reasonable contribution to the exchequer. Prior to December’s doubling in Air Passenger Duty, I would have argued that there was still room for these costs to be accounted for, and that they should be done in a manner which was proportional to the pollution caused, or at least to the cost of the ticket.

Then Gordon Brown decides to not only double APD overnight, but to apply the increase to tickets which had already been purchased. So where was the public outcry over this extremely vindictive move? There wasn’t any - all we got was the green lobby telling us that this increase wasn’t enough. Judging by the carbon offset costs produced by DEFRA, and endorsed by websites like Climate Care, which puts the climate cost of a domestic flight at less than £1, this increase was more than enough, even if the government itself has already admitted that APD is a very “blunt instrument”.

My biggest gripe with the £10 APD is that it is levied in both directions on domestic sectors. Try telling a family of four living in Belfast that they should take a weekend break in (already expensive) London (£80 goes to Gordon), when they could drive down to tax-free Dublin, and fly three times further to Malaga, paying a mere €5.78 each for the return journey.

Unlike many within the aviation industry, I don’t think that global warming is a hoax, but I do like to try and understand as many angles to the argument as possible. One thing I am sure of is that there are more effective ways of reducing CO2 output than going after aviation.

We might be an easy target, but how many politicians realise that they can only ever exercise limited control over an industry that is inherently international. Perhaps that’s why we’ve suffered here in Coventry, but that’s for another debate.

If even a fraction of the extra billions raised from APD was diverted towards investing in better facilities for walking and cycling - including safe routes to school, then we’d all be better off. For all the unproven talk about radiative forcing at higher altitudes, vehicle emmissions at ground level are indisputable, and one way to limit these is to make the walking environment as safe and attractive as possible.

That’s what the Dutch and Swiss do, and it is no wonder that their levels of obesity are a fraction of ours. Unfortunately, both countries tend to operate under a much gentler form of democracy, whereas we have to sex everything up to keep the tabloids busy.

Sex up self powered transport anyone? Somehow the walk-a-mile-a-day club is never going to be as salacious as bashing the mile high club.

Easyjet are set to launch a massive environmental campaign later this morning, with the airline claiming that carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 50% as early as 2015. 

The implication is that Easyjet’s proposals will apply to the industry as a whole, rather than to its own emissions, which are already substantially below the European average. 

Although we are assuming that they are talking about emissions per passenger carried, rather than total emissions of the industry, this is still a very significant ambition.

Flighmapping will be in attendance to find out how Easyjet plan to achieve this, but we expect that some of the following will be high on the agenda:

1. Phasing out older, less efficient aircraft — this is a very easy call for Easyjet to make, especially as many of these are run by their behemoth old school European state carrier counterparts.
2. Improvements in air traffic control paths, and more efficient runway management — again, and easy demand to make, but one which could have significant impacts, even though very few of these will be visible to the consumer.
3. Continuing investment in modern fleets, and new engine technology — again, an easy call for cash rich and fast growing budget airlines to make.
4. Maintaining high occupancy levels, and sticking to point to point route networks — again, this has always been the staple business of the low-cost carriers.

Most of the above strategies are well known within the industry, even if they might go right over the heads of your typical whingeing environmental protester. 

Last week, Flybe gave us further details of their environmental labelling scheme, a strategy that they have been working on for at least three years now.  Will Easyjet be announcing something similar, and to what extent will they embrace the concept of carbon offsetting? 

Again, this is still a minefield for the typical consumer, with Flybe having opted to contribute towards energy saving projects in schools.  I wonder if Easyjet will go for something more visible, possibly involving forestry projects, along the lines are the ones which have already been backed by the Peel airport group, who operate Liverpool, Doncaster Sheffield and Durham Tees Valley airports.

Either way, I hope that the initiative they undertake is substantial, and properly thought through.  However serious concerns over the environmental impact of aviation might be, the hysteria-fuelled media have given the green lobby total carte blanche to criticise the industry, with numerous so-called facts being doled out with scant scientific justification. 

The only substantial challenges to the status quo so far to have gained any major press attention have emanated in typical foulmouthed style from Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary.  These might well have grabbed the headlines, but they have done little to move the debate forward.

No one should pretend that the airline industry can plant its green credentials overnight, and come up smelling of roses the next morning, but the big Orange can still make a substantial contribution to the debate, without having to turn the air into Ryanair’s shade of blue.

Here at Flightmapping.com, we’ve never tried to pretend that environmental issues are easy to solve, or that we should just bury our heads in the sand.

But with all the hype which we are bombarded with every day, is there a chance for some more level headed discussion?

We certainly hope so, and if you think so true, please come and join the Envirorealists group on Facebook:

• Envirorealists

Antithesis of: Enviro-fundamentalism, eco-puritains, ecoterrorism, eco nazis, doom and gloom, environmental doomsday.

A few things we believe in (especially when it comes to travelling):

• We love this planet, but we’ve got to get around it somehow.
• We love buying nice things, but try and get as much use out of them as possible.
• We’re happy to do without some bits of useless technology - like GPS systems!
• We don’t think the world is going to implode tomorrow.
• We’ll do what we’re best at, respect our neighbours, and leave the complex science to the real experts.
• We don’t believe everything we see on Panorama.
• We know that Global Warming is a challenge - so is extreme poverty, sorting out the Middle East, controlling communicable diseases, and keeping the economy ticking over.
• We are aware that stress and depressive illnesses are two of the biggest challenges for western health systems. Sometimes it is nice to take a holiday to get away from our busy lifestyles, without feeling the guilt from the incessant bleatings of the green lobby.
• We just wish that organisations like Greenpeace would get their facts right for a change.
• We’d love to get hold of Tony Blair’s BA Executive Club card, and just wish he’d done something useful with all those trips he’s made.
• We don’t mind paying green taxes - if they go towards environmental projects.
• We’re fed up with all the hype against the aviation industry - especially when the recent doubling of APD has just has environmental groups salivating for more. How come domestic energy use, which is responsible for far greater emmissions, continues to get off Scott free?
• We’ll take the train, because it is a better use of our time.

Please post any questions about flight routes you would like to see, or have brought back: