Category Archives: Routes & News

Coventry Airport flights expansion refused – what went wrong?

Posted on by
1

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.

Flights to Zurich from Newquay

Posted on by
Reply

When I saw Newquay Airport’s press release about its defence of BA’s new Newquay flights, there was a mention of flights also operating to Zurich. in Switzerland.

I didn’t think this sounded likely, but it turns out that weekly charters will be operating in the summer season. I’m not sure if they will also be bringing people back in the other direction, but this is certainly one of the more obscure routes we’ve seen in recent times.

Monarch Scheduled’s flights to Malaga were dropped very quickly, but they were trying to fill a much larger aircraft (an Airbus A320) on a much higher frequency (3x per week). For now, this is the only destination Newquay Airport offers outside the British Isles. It would be interesting to see which European cities the airport’s management think might be able to sustain regular scheduled services, and whether any airlines have been interested. Flybe would certainly make a good candidate for a route to either Paris or Amsterdam, either of which would provide numerous onward connections, but we’re not sure how ambitious a route like this would be for an airport of this size?

When did science come into it?

Posted on by
2

Just having a scout round a few other posts on these new Newquay flights, and I came across an article in the Ecologist, with the headline:

“BA ‘fly in the face of science’ with Newquay flights “

Just exactly what science are they flying in the face of? If we are talking about the hotly debated issue of climate change, then they should remember that BA are at the forefront of carbon trading initiatives, and that they have never tried to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist – even though there are still plenty of scientists out there who would say it doesn’t, or that if it does, that we’re really not the culprits.

If they are saying that we should reduce our dependency on domestic flights, then fine – but did they ever check to see where this plane was going before they launched their tirade? No, they did not. The answer is Glasgow – another domestic destination, and one which IS served by DIRECT, ELECTRIC powered trains.

The article then goes on to state the so-called science:

“Greenpeace campaigner, Emily Armistead, said that BA’s decision to open the route – especially in the light of a new high-speed rail link which will open later this year – flew in the face of science:
‘Planes are ten times more damaging to the climate than trains, so if we don’t do something about the growth in aviation Britain will find it very hard to meet its global warming targets,’ she said.”

 Newquay airport have meanwhile issued their own rebuttal, claiming that:

“Eight coach HST (High Speed Train) with 472 seats emits 12,170 g/km of CO2; at 30% occupancy (i.e. 140 seats), a standard occupancy rate used for UK rail travel, equates to 0.04 tonnes per passenger; for 105 pax (equivalent to 75% occupancy on a Boeing 737-400) the equivalent figure is 0.05 tonnes.”

We have no reason to dispute the 30% occupancy claim about the trains – and perhaps if Greenpeace activists spent more time on them, they’d realise that this is quite realistic! Over-crowding grabs the headlines (remember how the Cumbria incident was initially reported as being a ‘packed’ train to add more impact to the headline?). The reality is that outside peak times, trains are just very good at moving around huge volumes of air. The further away from London the train gets, the more passengers get off – and since when will the tin-pot branch line to Newquay be a high speed route? It might be scenic, as is the route along much of the way, but please stop pretending it is quick!

So far, this route seems pretty unpopular, if the numbers on the inaugral flight are anything to go by. One thing is certain though – if the route is a flop, it will get dropped like a hot potato. Train companies just can’t, and won’t do this.

So, the claim that “planes are ten times more damaging to the environment than trains” is utter garbage – nonsensical, unethical, and totally unscientific. But do Greenpeace provide further justification of their figures? No, they are far too busy going on their headline-seeking rants, knowing full well that they will get the media support they want, and that their figures will rarely be scutinised.

Does it matter then if flights are still more environmentally damaging, but “only” by a factor of between, say, 50% and 200%, and not the 1000% that Greenpeace are claiming?

Yes it does – because there is a huge difference in logic between the two. If trains really are super-clean, as could be said for the Swiss system, where virtually all of the network is electrified, and where far more electricity is generated from HEP, then the environmental case for using them is compelling. If the difference is only by a small factor, then surely any efforts to reduce transport’s emmissions should be targetted at ALL modes of movement, not just flights? And how come, all of a sudeen, environmentalists have started saying that flying is worse than “driving and going by train”. It isn’t! It all depends on the journey being undertaken, the directness of the route, the fuel or power source, and perhaps most importantly of all, the levels of occupancy.

So if you are really concerned about science, there is only one place for the kind of nonsense spouted by Greenpeace – the recycling bin.

 

 

Flights to Newquay – should BA bother?

Posted on by
2

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 must stop this obsession with domestic flights

Posted on by
1

It seems that the Conservative party have blindly jumped on the directionless and disingenuous bandwagon which seeks to penalise people who take domestic flights within the UK. Last week, the Independent carried a front-page article about British Airways’ new flights to Newquay, claiming that the airline was being irresponsible by starting a new domestic route — even if this service was merely a reallocation of a previous Glasgow rotation!Of course, the industry needs to cover its environmental costs, but in the rush to go carbon crazy, we seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to protecting our own domestic market. As coverage of the British travel trade fair in Birmingham has pointed out, 80% of the UK tourism market is fed by domestic visitors, yet anyone who chooses to fly to internal destinations is now being penalised by two sets of air passenger duty, instead of just one. How can we persuade a family of four from Belfast to take a short break in London, which is already one of the most expensive cities in Europe, when they will have to fork out £80 in air passenger duty? Instead, this family could drive down to Dublin airport, and take a short break to Spain, and pay no air passenger duty at all on the outbound journey, and a mere €5.78 each on the return — despite the fact that the flight to Spain will be almost 3 times as far.At least bed tax proposals seem to have been dropped for now, but if we are going to be serious about asking more people to take their holidays in the UK, then this will inevitably mean we will have to build more accommodation facilities along the South Coast. This will no doubt bring the travel industry back into conflict with an untold number of nimby groups, crewed by the very people who are trying to stop us from flying to more distant destinations.

Whilst any policy measures to encourage the development of more high-speed rail routes should be broadly encouraged, the West Coast Mainline upgrade has already shown us just how massively over budget these projects can run — so much so that the (allegedly unpaid) carbon cost of a flight from Birmingham to Edinburgh is significantly less than the subsidy handed out to the railways for the short train journey from Birmingham New Street to the airport!

Any transport infrastructure needs to balance its social and environmental impacts with its financial costs, but it would be disastrous to give the rail industry blank cheques in the name of combating global warming, especially as domestic flights make up such a tiny proportion of aviation’s contribution to the problem.

 

 

Nantes to Aberdeen flights?

Posted on by
1

According to Christopher Rodrigues, chairman of Visit Britain, no frills flights could be a blessing for British tourism. He commented that there is a potential for the inbound UK market to be exploited at every overseas airport, but then remarked that no one would have thought 10 years ago that there would be direct Nantes to Aberdeen flights.

I wasn’t aware that these flights existed now, and to be honest, I think that’s one route which still won’t exist in 10 years time, but who knows?