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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.

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.

If you have a question to ask about your flight, we’ll do our best to answer it.

Anything along the lines of - what can I take on board, can I use this device, what is this airport like for connections, etc.

If we can’t answer it, I’m sure we’ll find someone who can.

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:

I have just got one of those consumer survey stories through, which claims that online consumers will turn immediately to a competitor if they read a bad review.  Of course, there is a great deal of truth in this, but any kind of press release on these issues needs to be backed by a bit of credibility.  The survey was done by the digital marketing agency Tamar, who are well known on the search engine industry circuit.  The problem is that a company like this has a clear agenda to sell “online reputation management solutions” to its clients, many of whom will bite at this kind of story.

The survey claims that if consumers really bad review when they are searching for a travel company by name, then 58% of them would book with an alternative provider, whereas 42% of them would stop their search session.  This seems to make the assumption that 100% of consumers who read a bad review will end up turning away from the travel company in question.  The survey then goes on to claim that:

 ”one of the most high-profile travel companies to suffer as a result of natural search results, reducing a plethora of negative reviews is budget airline Ryanair.”

If this claim were true, then surely, Ryanair would have already lost 100% of their business? For all the obvious reasons, Ryanair are still the black sheep amongst large swathes of the travel industry, be it online or offline — just as they are amongst numerous consumer groups, politicians and environmentalists. But just because the airline generates large quantities of negative publicity, does that mean that they should be worried?  Clearly, Ryanair’s incessant rise in passenger numbers suggests otherwise.

This does not mean that consumer reviews don’t have their place, but it does mean that expectations have to be managed.  People seem to love telling stories about Ryanair, whether they have flown with them or not.  Ryanair are the one airline to thrive on the age-old adage that no publicity is bad publicity.  The statistics however speak for themselves — Ryanair carry more passengers on more on-time flights than any other airline, and they also lose a few of their passengers’ bags in the process. 

So does this tell the whole story?  Not entirely — Ryanair tend to use airports which are much less congested, and therefore less prone to delays. Meanwhile, charging passengers to check their luggage in, and only operating point-to-point schedules, also ensures that they have far fewer opportunities to lose bags, compared to network carriers like British Airways.

Would I recommend flying with Ryanair, given a like-for-like comparison on the same route?  Such direct comparisons are very difficult to make, as there are very few examples of Ryanair operating flights directly against a competitor — i.e. from the same departure airport to the same arrival airport.  I can reach the check-in desks of either Birmingham or Coventry airport within 15 minutes of leaving my house, and as neither these are Ryanair strongholds, their rivals tend to start with a significant advantage.  If I’m trying to get to somewhere a little bit more adventurous (both Coventry and Birmingham still offer a pretty conservative choice of destinations, although Birmingham is looking a lot more interesting this summer), then I would look briefly at flights from East Midlands airport, before considering flying from London. 

The last time I flew with Ryanair was just over a year ago, when I went with a friend to Palermo in Sicily.  On that particular occasion, Ryanair were the only airline flying there, and as the friend in question not only lives within 30 minutes’ drive of Stansted, but also gets free parking there, the choice of departure airport wasn’t really an issue either.

Ultimately, I’ll always pay a bit extra to use more convenient airport, and to know that I can reserve a window seat at check-in.  Much as though I think reliability is important, Ryanair’s punctuality can also be counterbalanced by the fact that they generally operate a much lower frequency of flights, and provide very little assistance when things do go wrong.

So should Michael O’Leary be quaking in his boots because Flightmapping says that Ryanair are a long way from being our favourite airline? We very much doubt it — our whole point in existence is to provide route information about which airlines offer flights to which destinations. Any commentary that we provide is always going to lean towards the most direct option, whereas Ryanair are more likely to take you to a field in the middle of nowhere. 

One mantra that Ryanair repeatedly spew out is that lowest cost always wins.  This might well be true for the vast majority of passengers, but this site has always been much more focused on providing information for people who know where they want to go, and who will value finding the most direct way of getting there above the price they have to pay. 

This doesn’t mean that we don’t think the price is important, it is just that we like to look at the whole picture, instead of just the baseline cost, which can often be so misleading anyway.  Fortunately for Ryanair, most people don’t think that way, so even if I had decided to go on a massive tirade against them, they would have still filled another load of flights in the time you read this article!

Looking back over the last few weeks, it really has been silly season from various so-called environmental organisations, who have each taken their turn at launching evermore ludicrous potshots at the aviation industry. One of the most bizarre episodes involved Greenpeace campaigners turning up to protest at British Airways reinstating their flights from London Gatwick to Newquay. It is not that I’ve got anything against environmental organisations protesting about short-haul flights - they have some valid points to make - it is just that they really do seem to pick on the most ridiculous targets.
Of all the major airlines operating flights from UK airports, why target BA? Surely these groups would want target the airlines which are growing fastest, and which they see as the biggest threat - Easyjet and Ryanair? They’ve levelled plenty of criticism about the growth of no-frills flights before, but I can’t help wondering that the real reason for targeting BA is that they are a soft touch. The dumbest of all anti-aviation groups, the aptly named (no, I don’t do irony) Planestupid, did try to have a go at Easyjet, but turned up at the Easy-brand headquarters in Camden, instead of the Easyjet head offices, which are situated in a bright orange hangar at Luton airport!   Perhaps Planestupid are one of the few organisations out there who practice what they preach, because anyone who has ever taken flights from Luton knows that Easyjet’s head office is impossible to miss! Of course, they wouldn’t dare mess with Ryanair – not only are the Irish airline notoriously litigious, but their tough talking (and highly intelligent) chief executive, Michael O’Leary, would tear them to shreds. 
So why even bother to add more fuel to the fire, and keep commenting on this topic? Simply because, in broad terms, I do actually agree with the principle – short-haul flights should be replaced by quality, high-speed train services. However, as always, the do-gooders have got plenty of sticks with which to beat us, but they are pretty lousy at coming up with carrots. So, looking over some recent UK domestic air route changes, I’ll do a bit of their homework for them. Below are just a few examples of routes which have been cancelled, or significantly cut back, in the face of improved competition from high-speed train services or more suitable airline rivals:
The end of BA Connect - whether British Airways continue to operate flights to Newquay or not, the least that groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth could have done is given them a huge pat on the back for finally bringing the axe down on their heavily unprofitable, and equally wasteful, BA Connect regional airline. Despite half-hearted attempts to rebrand this business and launch it as a low fares operation, BA Connect was always going to be a costly company to run, and one which relied on heavily inefficient aircraft. Our understanding is that there were several BA Connect routes which regularly operated with single figure passenger loads. Those routes which are still viable, will continue to be operated by Flybe, leading to some inevitable rationalisation in the market, especially on numerous city pairs where the airline duo competed head-to-head with each other. This means that there are now huge efficiency improvements on flights between Scotland and major regional hubs such as Birmingham and Manchester.
Axing of British Airways Gatwick to Newcastle flights; reduction in frequency on British Airways Gatwick to Glasgow flights - in both of these cases, British Airways might be giving way to no frills competition in the form of Jet2 and Easyjet respectively, but it is generally accepted that no-frills airlines offer greater efficiencies than their traditional counterparts, in terms of both financial costs and fuel burn per passenger. Additionally, Eastern Airways were unable to make their flights from London City to Newcastle work. Although we always felt that this particular route looked ambitious, we would expect that the vast majority of sensible business travellers between London and the Northeast will continue to opt to take the train.
Manchester to Edinburgh (Jet2) - although this route continues to be operated by Flybe (who have inherited the route from BA Connect) and BMI Regional, we suspect that this flight is simply too short to be viable for no-frills operation.
Liverpool to Edinburgh and Glasgow (Flybe); Belfast City - Flybe’s attempt to muscle in to Liverpool has to be one of the most spectacular failures in low-cost airline base set-ups. Although there was no other competition on flights from Liverpool to Scotland at the time (Ryanair have subsequently launched cheap flights from Liverpool to Inverness and Aberdeen), there just does not appear to have been enough demand to make flights from Liverpool to the Scottish central belt work. It might look surprising that these routes were a failure, considering that Manchester can still support competition to both cities between Flybe and BMI regional, but this is significantly helped by transfer traffic, which is not relevant to Liverpool. Flybe’s failure on the Liverpool to Belfast City route was a little bit more surprising to us, but it seems that they just couldn’t compete against Easyjet’s well established flights to Belfast International.
Liverpool to London City (VLM) — reduced frequency. This service initially operated five times a day when the route started, but now VLM operate just three daily flights between Liverpool and London City. During the time that these flights of operated, the West Coast mainline has undergone significant upgrades. However, VLM have recently increased their frequency on their London City to Manchester flights, bucking the general trend towards rail. This suggests to us that rail travel has a significant advantage over flights into other London airports - especially Stansted and Manchester, but that for the time being at least, VLM can capitalise on being able to get people in and out of the Docklands financial district very quickly. As the West Coast mainline undergoes further improvements, and as domestic flights continue to be squeezed by having to pay two sets of air passenger duty, we wouldn’t be surprised to see VLM’s Liverpool flights getting dropped within the next 12 months.
Birmingham to Newquay (BmiBaby) – there isn’t much difference in the drivetime between Newquay and either Birmingham or London, but BmiBaby’s route to the Cornish surfing Mecca just did not seem to work from Birmingham. There might well have been the operational reasons behind this decision, but it was interesting to see that BmiBaby’s Manchester to Newquay flights (Manchester is another two hours up the road) have survived. We think this might be an interesting case in point about the viability of shorter domestic hops - even if the road journey takes a bit longer, people still prefer the convenience of driving in their own car. This is less of an issue for more business dominated routes, where speed, and the ability to work during the journey, offer advantages which outweigh the convenience of the car.

We hope that the above examples show that market forces can and will have a significant effect on people’s choice of transport mode, regardless of any input from the environmental lobby. As each case has shown, the reasons for success or failure of any particular flight route can be extremely varied, and even these are subject to a liberal dose of our own speculation. However, what they highlight is that the aviation industry, in the UK at least, is extremely Darwinian in its weeding out of the poor performers. Perhaps this stems down to the ultimate paradox of air travel - because flying is an inherently resource intensive method of transport, companies have to be extremely efficient in their usage of fuel, and other assets like aircraft, in order to compete and survive. Adding additional environmental costs on to short-haul flights might tip the balance against inefficient routes even further, although this might also endanger some economically vital regional routes. 
There has been scant debate so far about where additional taxes on flights should be allocated, but any fiscally responsible government should take some very deep breaths before handing this cash straight over to the railway industry. When the national flag carrying airline (British Airways) withdrew from its base operations from every UK city apart from London, there was no big outcry - the move was accepted as a rational and necessary cost-cutting effort. Now what would happen if the same efficiency measures were proposed on the rail network? Mention of Dr Beeching (the notorious BR chairman who closed huge swathes of the UK railway network in the 1960s) will send shivers down the spine of any avid train proponent, but if we are going to be serious about making long-distance train travel an economically and environmentally viable alternative to flying, isn’t it time the rail industry borrowed a few efficiency measures from the no-frills airlines?

How disguting, do Ryanair have no shame?

As if they don’t have enough controversy on their hands, Ryanair now want to charge more for overweight passengers who fly with them. 

Follow Up (8th May)

Well it seems like the story has been picked up in a few forums over the bank holiday weekend. No idea why they’re only getting it now, but I guess that’s the nature of search engines.

So, how many a serious point is said in jest?

• Yorkshire Divers
• Snowboard Club UK

As usual, it looks like the green lobby missed a trick with their pointless protest against BA’s new flights from Gatwick to Newquay, which started this week.

They chose to target the CO2 emmissions of the industry as a whole, and to say that these flights should not be needed, because the route is a very short one, and people should travel by train instead for domestic journeys.

Newquay airport countered by saying that the train service to Newquay was actually pretty lousy (let’s face it, it is), and that a fair comparison needs to take into account that trains usually only operate at 30% occupancy.

Their figures suggested that the CO2 emmissions per passenger for the flights would be no greater than the train journey, because these flights should be around 75% full.

So when Greenpeace turned up to give their usual tirade, it looks like there were almost as many protesters as passengers, since only 34 people turned up for the Gatwick to Newquay leg. There were also just 18 passengers on the return flight.

Considering all the free publicity that Greenpeace and chums have given BA about this new route, I would have expected more people to have wanted to use it. Of course, it is early days yet, but as we already commented last week, this route now has three airlines competiting against each other. I would still expect more passengers to travel with Air Southwest, who offer a much higher frequency of service on this route.

Maybe this route will pick up over the summer, maybe it will not, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see it quietly dropped at the end of the season.

Then, Greenpeace can have their little organic beer party and dance a merry jig about the nanogram of C02 which will have been saved, but the simple reality is that this route will thrive or fall on pure commercial logic. As it happens, commercial logic will also be environmental logic, as is so often the case.

We ran an article on Flightmapping last week about dropping adverts for Flybe, because they has asked for all affiliate marketing activity to be suspended. The reason for this was quite clearly stated - they were approaching the financial year end, and the budget had reached its limit.

Then they told us that it was all a mis-understanding, they just wanted affiliates (sites like ourselves) to cool things down a bit, and actually we could carry on advertising them, but could we just tone down any suggestion about them being short of cash?

We made a few small changes to the story, but they then wanted us to go further, explaining exactly how we’d made this mis-understanding, and adding some general comment about what a nice airline they were.

Unfortunately, we just can’t do that, and our commercial arrangements with them are suspended by mutual disagreement, with immediate effect.

For further details about this (from the perspective of the affiliate industry), please see my personal blog post on the subject.