Tag Archives: Heathrow

Heathrow’s third runway in the Dragon’s Den

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Last week, I attended a discussion organised by CIMTIG regarding the future of Heathrow Airport, and the aviation industry in general. Sadly, because of limited time, and the attempt to discuss the whole industry, rather than just Heathrow’s third runway, they didn’t explore as many of the issues as I would like them to have done – but it was still a very informative evening.

This week is the Conservative party conference, and we expect some further discussion from the government-in-waiting about why they believe there are better ways of handling demand than building another runway.

I’d like to put Heathrow’s third runway into a ‘virtual Dragon’s Den’ and see how it gets along. Prior to last week, I’d say I was probably against the plans, but the presentation from the BAA director responsible for the third runway gave a very strong case, so I’m firmily back on the fence. Let’s see if the proposal can survive in the den. So here we have it – billions sitting on the table, rather than the usual £250,000, and I think we need a majority of the ‘Dragons’ to ‘invest’, rather than just the usual one or two.

Introducing the dragons.

In other parlance, they might be known as ‘stakeholders’ or ‘investment solutions partners’, but as I hate both of those terms, I’ll definetely stick with Dragons!

  1. Airport neighbours
  2. Passengers
  3. The Economy
  4. The Environment
  5. Airlines

The article will follow later in the week. What do you think? Would you ‘invest’?

Let’s honour Churchill by naming Heathrow Airport after him

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I’m fed up with reading in the papers about people who want to berate Churchill’s legacy and play down his role in defeating the forces of Nazism.

You only have to look at the current bunch of ratbags infesting Downing Street to realise how much better a leader Churchill was than any of his predecessors. For some reason, we British don’t like to name our airports after real leaders. Instead, we have an irrelevant little glass shed up near Doncaster named after that thief Robin Hood, and Liverpool Airport named after dreary dreamer John Lennon. Lennon might have imagined a world free from tyranny, but Churchill created the legacy to achieve it.

My only question is which airport would be more appropriate – Stansted or Heathrow?

Norman Foster’s delightfully simple design for Stansted might be an easy gateway for Szczecin, from where Goerring first coined the term ‘Iron Curtain’; Gdansk, from where Lech Wałęsa first started the Solidarity movement to defeat Communism; and Berlin, where Roger Waters finally brought down The Wall in July 1990, but the place has long sinced been cheapened by Irish cheapskates Ryanair.

Surely Winston would find Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which now shares so many more connections with the USA, not to mention the rest of the world, a far more enjoyable place from which to catch flights, even if it was designed by Labour Luvvie Richard Rogers?

Double Dublin flights blow on St Patrick’s Day for Peel Airports

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Today might be St Patrick’s Day, but it can’t be a very good day for Peel, who have just lost flights to Dublin from two of the three airports they have in their portfolio. Ryanair are cancelling their cheap Dublin flights from both Doncaster Robin Hood airport and Durham Tees Valley, although they are claiming this is due to the implementation of a €10 tourism tax by the Irish government, rather than anything at the UK end. 

 

This really is the latest in a long string of bad news for Durham Tees Valley airport, who have recently lost a base operator Flyglobespan, cheap flights to Poland from Wizzair, and the Fly bmi feeder route into Heathrow. Let’s hope things don’t get any worse for them. 

 

 

Meanwhile, the outlook does not look so bad at Peel’s other airport in Liverpool. Although Ryanair did announce in February that they would cut back on some routes, the airport has still seen tremendous growth in recent years, and can truly be regarded as one of the great success stories in the UK aviation scene. With a strong Irish community in Liverpool, and Ryanair now established as a healthy competitor to easyJet on the Belfast route, in addition to the wide network of flights to the Irish Republic that they have been operating for several years, we do at least think that flights across the Irish Sea from Liverpool should remain secure for many years to come.

As BMI scrap flights, is Heathrow’s loss just Amsterdam’s gain?

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If ever there was a clear-cut argument in favour of Heathrow third runway, then it would be the fact that BMI have just scrapped their flights from Leeds Bradford and Durham Tees Valley to Heathrow. Anyone looking to transfer onto other flights will now have no option but to travel to Amsterdam with KLM instead, as neither of these airports offer hub feeder flights from any other airline.  

Proponents of Heathrow’s third runway argue that the extra capacity that would be created could be used to keep open domestic routes like these two, and also to connect other British cities with Heathrow which have lost their links due to the high taxes imposed on UK domestic flights. Obvious cities which might otherwise support flights into Heathrow would include Liverpool and Inverness in the north and Plymouth and Newquay in the southwest. Meanwhile, opponents argue that people should travel to Heathrow by rail, and that the overall number of flights should be reduced anyway, thus reducing the prospect of these routes from ever becoming viable again. 

Right now, the facts would appear to speak for themselves when it comes to connecting flights, but what about people who just want point-to-point travel between British regional cities and London? We would expect some passengers from Leeds Bradford and Durham to transfer to flights from Manchester and Newcastle respectively, but a far more significant number will travel by train. Both airports also talked about finding replacement airlines to open up new routes into London, but we heard the same rhetoric when VLM scrapped their Liverpool to London City flights. Perhaps Flybe could come onto the scene at Leeds Bradford, where they already have a presence, but I don’t see them operating Gatwick to Durham Tees Valley flights alongside their existing Gatwick to Newcastle route. 

When it comes to the economic arguments about losing jobs to Amsterdam, there is nothing new here. For many years, KLM have offered more feeder flights from UK regional airports than any other airline, and they are set to increase this further still when they open up their new Liverpool to Amsterdam flights at the end of this month. Naturally, this isn’t good news for the UK economy, but we shouldn’t forget that Heathrow’s third runway would come with considerable economic and environmental costs as well. Nor should we forget that the ‘hub and spoke’ model is an inefficient way of operating flights, even if there is always going to be a need for it on some routes.