From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5024770.stm
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Last Updated: Sunday, 28 May 2006, 23:42 GMT 00:42 UK
Heathrow 'should be phased out'

Heathrow: A "truly great planning catastrophe"
Heathrow airport should be phased out and replaced with a new international hub to the east of London, a planning charity has claimed.
The Town and County Planning Association argues 30,000 homes could be built on the "catastrophically" planned west London site instead.

A Thames Estuary hub would stop plane noise over London and further expansion of Heathrow displacing villages.

The group said the swap should happen over the next century.

The report also claims that a high-speed rail link, from the new site, would be an alternative to "environmentally damaging short-haul flights".

'Logistically impossible'

In the paper, Heathrow's 60-year history was condemned as "a series of minor planning disasters that together make up one of the country's truly great planning catastrophes."

The report's authors Tony Hall and Sir Peter Hall said passengers who fumed at the "long taxiing operations culminating in a take-off queue, or at long periods spent in the four holding areas" might well echo Dr Johnson's famous remark about a dog walking on its hind legs.

"It's not that it is done well, but you are surprised to find it is done at all," wrote Dr Johnson.

They also said it would be "logistically impossible" for the airport to be phased out in a short time scale of five or ten years.

A housing development at Heathrow could be worth more than £6.8bn, they said.

I would hope so in the future.

I would be in favour of an airport east of the city... (I would like 4 East-West runways, 2 for takeoff and 2 for landing, with 4 or 5 large terminals)

But of course, you would lose that fantastic approach over London.

No chance in hell of Heathrow ever being phased out- Its an enormous driver of West Londons economy. Its also worth considering a brand new airport out in the thames estuary would cost billions & billions of pounds. Whats more likely is Stanstead & Gatwick will gradualy expand & Heathrow will get another terminal & new shorter runway.

Had Heathrow not been built on its current site & a new proposal for an airport out East was proposed instead it would make sense but its about 50 yrs to late for that.

what they also fail to mention is that not having heathrow would mean that anybody from west of london would have to travel all the way round to this new one, or stansted or gatwick. It would be ridiculous to have all 3 main airports to the east (or north/south east) so that those in w london have to drive even furhter thus adding even more traffic to the m25. It's a poorly researched and badly thought out idea

^^ I wouldn't say its poorly researched, Peter Hall is a 'god' in this field. A gradual shift over several decades is something I'd like.

A combination of Terminal 5, the Heathrow East project, a third runway, and potentially an additional terminal, could see Heathrow become one of the best planned airports in the world. Having the airport to the west of London gives better access to the rest of the country than any location in the Thames Estuary. Heathrow has fantastic transport links being right next to the widest section of the M25 and close to the juctions with the M1 and M4. You can get to central London in just 15 minutes on the Heathrow Express and also use the Tube. I really don't see the problem in knocking down a few houses to make way for expansion. This guy is saying that Heathrow's site could yield up 30,000 houses.... well so could any given site in the Thames Estuary.

^^ I think the main problem is that the flightpaths are in the wrong place and the area has become far too densely populated and detrimental. This is all ironic of course because nobody would be there without the airport, but if air pollution levels are dropped further, a congestion charge is placed around all approaches to the airport, noise levels reduced further, Airtrack is built and a new HSR/maglev connection to the UK and Central London then Heathrow would have a role in the future of London and the UK.

As I said in "Transport and Infastructure", when London and the UK has such a demand for air travel, with London being the most important city on Earth for it, it is extremely unlikely that such a huge airport will be destroyed for the sake of a few homes. What is more likely is that after the third runway and sixth terminal, it will cease to be feasible to expand and somewhere like Stansted will become London's second airport, in the way that Charles De Gaulle has expanded so much recently.

^^ I think the main problem is that the flightpaths are in the wrong place and the area has become far too densely populated and detrimental. This is all ironic of course because nobody would be there without the airport, but if air pollution levels are dropped further, a congestion charge is placed around all approaches to the airport, noise levels reduced further, Airtrack is built and a new HSR/maglev connection to the UK and Central London then Heathrow would have a role in the future of London and the UK.It doesn't need any of this stuff. Crossrail would be useful as it would link across London (rather than just Paddington) but the last thing Heathrow needs is to be made more expensive, and thus less competitive, by introducung congestion charges. Maglev to central London is not feasable and completely uneccessary given that it already takes just 15 minutes to central London on the Heathrow Express. All Heathrow really needs is new runways and terminal buildings. More than anything it needs runways, runways, and runways.... Heathrow is now completely slot constrained and many routes out of London are being dropped or being started from other European airports because of this chronic slot contraint problem. It's no good saying expand out of Stansted instead because Stansted offers no opportunity for BA to hub. To be competitive an airline needs to keep all of its operations, both short-haul and long-haul, at one site, and that site is Heathrow.

I think it's very very unlikely that Heathrow will be phased out anytime soon. It's a huge employer for the area and with new construction projects like T5 still underway it would be extremely expensive to transfer its operations to the East of London, although ultimately that would be preferable, with the new homes growth in that area in the coming decades.

It doesn't need any of this stuff. Crossrail would be useful as it would link across London (rather than just Paddington) but the last thing Heathrow needs is to be made more expensive, and thus less competitive, by introducung congestion charges. Maglev to central London is not feasable and completely uneccessary given that it already takes just 15 minutes to central London on the Heathrow Express. All Heathrow really needs is new runways and terminal buildings. More than anything it needs runways, runways, and runways.... Heathrow is now completely slot constrained and many routes out of London are being dropped or being started from other European airports because of this chronic slot contraint problem. It's no good saying expand out of Stansted instead because Stansted offers no opportunity for BA to hub. To be competitive an airline needs to keep all of its operations, both short-haul and long-haul, at one site, and that site is Heathrow.More capacity can be made out of Heathrow, but there are limits. After all the current terminals are re-built, a 3rd runway and new T6 - then what! Heathrow can't expand after that unless you turn half of West London into Heathrow. Your scenario is fine for 2020. I'm looking after 2030, because if we put all out eggs at Heathrow and it stalls, we'll be stuck for another two decades before anything else could be built and that is something that we should be looking at now and between 2012.

My maglev line wouldn't be just to Central London, it would be part of the north-south line to ensure that you could increase public transportation usage from the futher areas where people might have originally drove in. You totally forget the point that the likes of Crossrail, Heathrow Express, etc.... to Heathrow don't go further - they don't link up to Reading. If you want to go to Heathrow by rail from Reading, you have to go to Paddington and then back out again on the Heathrow Express. That or you change at Ealing Broadway for the District Line, go to Acton Town and then get onto the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow. Heathrow is only good if you live in West London. If you live in the west beyond Heathrow, the only way without hassle is by car.

Without a congestion charge around Heathrow, the capacity will be further constrained because nobody will be able to get to the airport unless we start building double decker motorways - cars are an inefficent mode of transport and the vast majority of car traffic into Heathrow could be excluded.

Remember also that most European airports are located outside the urban area, have large tracts of space for future expansion and little people living close-by. A Hong Kong type scenario would be benefical beyond 2030.

It's no good saying expand out of Stansted instead because Stansted offers no opportunity for BA to hub. To be competitive an airline needs to keep all of its operations, both short-haul and long-haul, at one site, and that site is Heathrow.

Is that true? Gatwick is a large hub for BA but withstanding that, Stansted could be built up as a site for airlines other than BA to fly to. There's much more space for expansion - the 2003 White Paper on aviation proposed that there should be a second runway at Stansted by 2012 leading to an increased capacity of 80m/year. Heathrow needs runways but there's only space for another small one. After that you're going to have to talk about demolishing Slough...

A congestion charge is only viable when, and if Crossrail is built, but people complained it would affect business in the centre of London and as far as I can tell those claims were largely unfounded.

"Heathrow is only good if you live in West London. If you live in the west beyond Heathrow, the only way without hassle is by car."

While this is true I live just outside Reading and it is so easy by car that this doesnt matter. And the main point is that if you took heathrow away and put it in the thames estuary then it would be a nightmatre for all those people in the west of england to get to. I've discovered that it is actually easier for me to fly from birmingham airport than try to get to gatwick, which should be easier, so how would one even further east help?? Yes it may be better for flight paths, but there is a reason there isnt anything there already! If there is too much pressure on Heathrow then smaller airlines should move to an expanded stansted etc while BA take more space at heathrow, but moving the whole thing would make it incredibly difficult for many people, i mean how would that many people get to the thames estuary without causing havoc in the m25!

I would imagine the environmentalists/locals would also be very anti a whopping great airport bulk on the Romney Marshes/Thames Estuary, and it would a logistical nightmare bulding new motorway, rail link ect.

It's not like Hong Kong where they had no option to close the old Kowloon Airport and completely rebuild the new one on reclaimed land away from the city.

Best option is to expand the existing airport, build a smaller shorter runway for the short haul flights and gradually replace the existing terminals.

"Heathrow is only good if you live in West London. If you live in the west beyond Heathrow, the only way without hassle is by car."

While this is true I live just outside Reading and it is so easy by car that this doesnt matter. And the main point is that if you took heathrow away and put it in the thames estuary then it would be a nightmatre for all those people in the west of england to get to. I've discovered that it is actually easier for me to fly from birmingham airport than try to get to gatwick, which should be easier, so how would one even further east help?? Yes it may be better for flight paths, but there is a reason there isnt anything there already! If there is too much pressure on Heathrow then smaller airlines should move to an expanded stansted etc while BA take more space at heathrow, but moving the whole thing would make it incredibly difficult for many people, i mean how would that many people get to the thames estuary without causing havoc in the m25!Yeah but that is what I was making a point of - the car is the serious way of getting to Heathrow from say Reading. The car is.

Is that true? Gatwick is a large hub for BA but withstanding that, Stansted could be built up as a site for airlines other than BA to fly to. There's much more space for expansion - the 2003 White Paper on aviation proposed that there should be a second runway at Stansted by 2012 leading to an increased capacity of 80m/year. Heathrow needs runways but there's only space for another small one. After that you're going to have to talk about demolishing Slough...

A congestion charge is only viable when, and if Crossrail is built, but people complained it would affect business in the centre of London and as far as I can tell those claims were largely unfounded.Gatwick is only a hub for BA because they are constrained at Heathrow. Gatwick (unlike Stansted) is also just about close enough to allow for transfers to Heathrow. The other airlines will not accept Heathrow being given to BA whilst they are forced to operate from Gatwick or, worse, Stansted. Virgin Atlantic consider Heathrow essential for their survival (BA managed to bankrupt all previous competitors by maintaining it's monopoly on Heathrow) and the American airlines are already extremely pissed off that only British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, and United Airlines can offer Trans-Atlantic services from Heathrow under the Bermuda II agreement (Continental, Delta, US Airways, BMI etc are at a huge disadvantage being forced to operate from Gatwick instead). Heathrow is already now down in 4th place in Europe in terms of the numbers of routes served. Just a few years ago it was number one. The hubbing options from Paris, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam are much better than Heathrow. This is because of one reason and one reason alone - NO FUCKING SLOTS!!! Heathrow has been completely slot constrained for more than a decade now and British airlines and aviation are now incapable of expanding their services to keep up with European competitors. Aviation is a vital plank of what makes London Europe's premier world city and the only way London can maintain a competitive edge is if a new runway is built at Heathrow. It's not a lack of money. BAA could fund it ten times over. The taxpayer doesn't have to pay a penny. It's just a total failure of planning leadership from government. Britain's 20th century history is littered with the remains of once world-class industries that did not innovate and invest sufficiently to stay competitive. Unless the government pulls its fucking finger out then we will see our world beating aviation industry go the same way.

One thing I've heard from reading Airliners.net is that Heathrow if it really needed could use both runways for landings and takeoffs at the same time, which would increases the amount of aircraft it could handle, but I don't think the situation is that desperate yet at Heathrow, or is it? Even though doing this would mean changing noise pollution laws so....

Whilst I agree to some extent a smaller third runway will not completely alleviate Heathrow's problems by any stretch of the imagination. And that, and another terminal, is all there's space to build. After that there really is no option but to accept Heathrow is full.*

If Stansted had a 80 million capacity, I doubt airline companies would mind that much because it would be a serious hub airport. Or am I missing the point?
Space around Stansted:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b316/BenL26/Stansted.jpg
Bloody unlikely, but it could be possible to connect a much larger Stansted to Heathrow by Maglev or if necessary a branch of Crossrail for transfers?

* Although there may be a limited amount of space in between the A4 and M4 it they could something a la Charles De Gaulle and build the railway over the road?
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b316/BenL26/Heathrow.jpg

One thing I've heard from reading Airliners.net is that Heathrow if it really needed could use both runways for landings and takeoffs at the same time, which would increases the amount of aircraft it could handle, but I don't think the situation is that desperate yet at Heathrow, or is it? Even though doing this would mean changing noise pollution laws so....Of course it's that desperate. BAA and the airlines have been pushing for that for years. They have some political suport and are trying to get it through Parliament. However it only allows for a relatively small increase. Ultimately they have to add more runways at Heathrow.

it might be a mistake, as in there will not be much room for further expansion. However this would of been the case anywhere in this country, its rarther small, yet its a massive cultural/financial and transportation hub.

Can't see it being phased out.

I think the idea of one giant hub is slightly out of date. I very much understand the benefits of hubbing but I also get the disadvantages too. Wherever you have a huge airport you are going to create a pollution problem be it air or sound. Wherever you build it you are going to create traffic going to and from it and a demand for business land around it. Wherever you build it you will have to face down angry local residents.

Heathrow can only go so far, it is bursting to breaking point and will eventually become unattractive therefore something must be done. Fine it can expand in the short run with a new terminal or runway but that will only suffice for 20 years or so. It physically cannot maintain its status, London as whole, however, probably can. Any expansion may even be second best because the airport has to remain open for the works to be done meaning a compromise design.

The solution for me is quite clear. Spread the problem and specialise the role of the airport. Rail or Maglev is the key to the future success of Heathrow. If you connect all the airports up well enough with a high speed link that can even manage baggage transfers then you might be at the beginnings of a solution. You can, in effect, have the main airports and all their combined terminals and runways operating as one. No shortage of slots then. Connecting them provides more scope for shuffling the airlines around a bit. Journeys with the most common connecting flights could be lumped together more if necessary. The same rail maglev link could connect better to the City too (combined with crossrail). This way you spread the growth, and hence the problems and benefits associated, around a bit. One site may be desirable in some senses and the individual sites will still be individually big, but better connections would allow new options.

Specialisation. Most economic theory lauds the benefits of specialisation, airports could take more note. What do we need airports for? do we just grow and grow and grow them or do we look at alternatives. The rail/maglev issue raises its head again. Domestic air travel is a hoplessly inefficient use of our airports slots and capacity. A decent high speed ground transport system could irradicate them. There are different airlines and flights too. Short, medium, long haul, luxury, budget, charter, schedule. The airports could perhaps specialise on these points. Provided they are well connected the inconvenience to the passenger could be minimal.

We are thinking too closed minded about aiports. To mind the solution to air travel isn't our airports but our runways. Heathrow is big and important but has its limits. Time to start planning for the end of its single site dominance.

i cant see heathrow developing a terminal 6 at any point soon.. if ever.. terminal 2 is due to be closed as soon as t5 opens.. and is likely to be rebuilt with a 30mill pax capacity there wont really be a need for any more terminals

I'm pretty sure Heathrow East has the same capacity as the existing T2.

As a geographer I have an enormous amount of respect for Sir Peter Hall, but I think he's way off the mark here. An airport in East London? It will take fucking ages to get to for most of the population who live in Southern England. Totally ridiculous. Heathrow and Stansted are already there and have quite good infrastructure links with the rest of the country. Hmmm... lets build a brand new airport on an island or in marshlands which will be inundated with sea water when the seas rise in the coming decades.

I wish the government would just be honest with the public and say 'Yes, we are going to expand Heathrow, yes it is going to get a 6th terminal and the others will be redeveloped and yes, it will get a 3rd runway.'

Because it is evidently what is going to happen. Governments in the UK are far too short term to do anything else. The gov't need to tell HACAN to sod off and say 'tough' instead of this half arsed namby pampy slowly-slowly approach which damages Heathrow's stature as Europe's premier air hub.

Completely agree but it's never going to happen when a government will be out of power by the time Heathrow's position is compromised.

This is all a bit late in the day. All these issues were discussed during the airport white paper. There was one option to build a new four runway airport at Cliffe (North Kent), but they concluded that it would costs something like £10 billion more and require goverment subsidy until it grew to sufficient size. All the other options like expanding Heathrow were self funding and required no government money. If any one remembers there was a huge outcry about destroying a bird sanctuary and the lanscape of Great Expectations.

As a geographer I have an enormous amount of respect for Sir Peter Hall, but I think he's way off the mark here. An airport in East London? It will take fucking ages to get to for most of the population who live in Southern England. Totally ridiculous. Heathrow and Stansted are already there and have quite good infrastructure links with the rest of the country. Hmmm... lets build a brand new airport on an island or in marshlands which will be inundated with sea water when the seas rise in the coming decades.

I wish the government would just be honest with the public and say 'Yes, we are going to expand Heathrow, yes it is going to get a 6th terminal and the others will be redeveloped and yes, it will get a 3rd runway.'

Because it is evidently what is going to happen. Governments in the UK are far too short term to do anything else. The gov't need to tell HACAN to sod off and say 'tough' instead of this half arsed namby pampy slowly-slowly approach which damages Heathrow's stature as Europe's premier air hub.The irony is, is that is democracy - Britain gives far too much say to the individual for such large projects, thus increasing costs and taking a long time to actually get off the ground.

Personally I think Heathrow is the short-medium term option and we have to be thinking further than that. In the long-term Heathrow can not be what the London and British economy revolves around because there is only so much more expansion that the airport can make.

Eventually we'll have to plan for a shift away from Heathrow to either a new airport or Gatwick or Stansted and the longer we wait, the less time we will have to ensure plots surrounding future expansion aren't sold for other uses, new transport routes are safe-guarded, plans and aviation routes are masterplanned, etc....

Heathrow Terminal 5 was planned in the 1980's, the first planning application was made back in 1993, and construction began in 2001; its going to be finished in 2008. With more powers by local bodies against airports, a rapidly expanding south-east population that is placing constraints on land, and a slower planning process than at any time in history, for a total Heathrow hand-over in say 2040, we would need to begin extensive plans just after 2012. To be double sure, such expansion should see planning work start now.

Heathrow has life in the old girl, but there is only so much more it can go.

I'd also add that an aviation fuel tax would be a good thing - that alone could pay for any subsidisation required to help build any new infrastructure to ensure the airport is properly connected.

Imagine though a vast central hub - excellent fast HSR/maglev connections to London and the rest of the UK. Imagine 400mppa moving through a single airport (that is the estimated number of aviation users in 2030 of London's 5 international airports). Thats is over 3x the current figure now. That is 3x the capacity we have to provide to ensure London is competitive and that is an obscene amount. Such a large single airport would have connections to the world that no other airport could ever hope to imagine - far more than even Heathrow can and will have in the future. Infact such a project would be so large, it would probably be the largest engineering project on the planet - imagine 13 T5's forming one airport. Naturally this would most likely never happen and putting eggs into one basket might not be benefical for catchment....but we seriously have to look at the future of Heathrow beyond T6 and the third runway.

^ :applause: :applause:

I couldn't have put it better. There's only so far that Heathrow can go, and only so much room that it could be expanded into.

If London wants to retain its top dog status, it needs to one day build a facility capable of handling hundreds of millions of passengers. Other cities have already built/are building new airports from scratch (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Beijing), and London needs to follow suit, not immediately but in the future.

After 100 glorious years, Wembley was demolished to make way for a new arena, the best in the world. Heathrow will need to do the same someday, and we need to start planning early.

As a geographer I have an enormous amount of respect for Sir Peter Hall, but I think he's way off the mark here. An airport in East London? It will take fucking ages to get to for most of the population who live in Southern England. Totally ridiculous. Heathrow and Stansted are already there and have quite good infrastructure links with the rest of the country. Hmmm... lets build a brand new airport on an island or in marshlands which will be inundated with sea water when the seas rise in the coming decades.

I wish the government would just be honest with the public and say 'Yes, we are going to expand Heathrow, yes it is going to get a 6th terminal and the others will be redeveloped and yes, it will get a 3rd runway.'

Because it is evidently what is going to happen. Governments in the UK are far too short term to do anything else. The gov't need to tell HACAN to sod off and say 'tough' instead of this half arsed namby pampy slowly-slowly approach which damages Heathrow's stature as Europe's premier air hub.:yes:This is all a bit late in the day. All these issues were discussed during the airport white paper. There was one option to build a new four runway airport at Cliffe (North Kent), but they concluded that it would costs something like £10 billion more and require goverment subsidy until it grew to sufficient size. All the other options like expanding Heathrow were self funding and required no government money. If any one remembers there was a huge outcry about destroying a bird sanctuary and the lanscape of Great Expectations.:yes:

I don't think it's a problem with terminal space, but rather runway slot times for arrivals and departures. What good is additional indoor space when the airplanes can't get in and out on time?

^^ Indeed and that is why new runways are needed. Stansted and Gatwick would be the natural options for this, but a closer 6th mega-airport could be possible.

Some interesting points here, the biggest fact is the total lack of long term planning. MPs don't want to make unpopular decisions regarding issues that what come into effect until after they retire. It the samre on most issues in the UK, Airports, Rail, Motorways etc, 10 years late the govenment will react and build something to meet the current requirements, then when it is finished it is no longer able to cope. Cross party groups need to be formed to decide on large issues.

Perhaps we need more conviction politicians worrying about their legacies? Interesting thought.

I wouldn't mind Tony's legacy to be the destruction of Slough for another runway...:p

Perhaps we need more conviction politicians worrying about their legacies? Interesting thought.That won't happen when the electorate don't look into the long-term interests of this country.

Its a bit like the railways, the contracts are too short to give proper incentive to actually make large inroads of change. Now that these contracts are extended, investment is increasing and the railways are getting better.

There needs to be some kind of long term transport planning body in the UK that is steered, but not ruled by the government of the day. The Strategic Rail Authority was an attempt at that for rail. Network Rail appears to be taking some lead, but is severely constrained.

The business demand for air appears to be for a single hub airport to the West of London. All accept that long term this will not be met by Heathrow. To go for a 10-15 year half hearted botch-job seems pure folly to me, simply increasing the size of the fall when it occurs. I'd say a site 10-15 miles North West of Heathrow needs to be found, a four runway airport built connected to a new north south high speed rail link. However this seems EXTREMELY unlikely to happen. My alternative would be to split BAA up, with each of Stanstead, Heathrow and Gatwick owned by another operator. BAA doesn't like it, nor does British Airways for obvious reasons. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think the competition will drive down costs which is something we should aim for if the perfect operational model is not possible. We need to be clever and compete in other ways. Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam are all local monopoply airports which have less incentive to drive down costs. Why are we so keen on protecting BAA's private monopoly? It is clearly fat and ripe for the picking, hence the take-over attempts. For Londoners and the South East this model would provide a good deal. The losers would be those changing flights and never stepping foot outside the airport. Is that such a loss? As air travel is predicted to keep rising frequencies and destinations surely are too? At what point does a flight to New York every 30 minutes from the same airport instead of a rival being able to schedule one every 25 become the clincher of the deal of where to locate your business?

I don't think a new airport is the answer. I think we must be realistic and also take the envoronmental considerations into account. Reasoned expansion is the way forward here, for me this means better use of the airports we've got already.

I really do not know what all the fuss is about. Between the A4 and M4 there is more than enough space to build a standard length new runway. All they have to do is to put a few access roads into tunnels (which is not expensive because you can do it using the cut-and-cover method) and move a few people that still live there. The problem is that no politician has the guts to stand up against the people who live around Heathrow. In France you do not have all these public enquieries - decisions are made in the national interest. That does not seem to count here. A few people take the whole country hostage. And indeed, as the government hasn't done anything else than publishing a white paper, Heathrow has fallen behind versus its European competitors the last 10 years (fortunately that terminal collapsed in Paris). With regards to transport to the airports... I read today the current government has spent £20 bio (yes, no typo) on an NHS IT system to keep all our health files. It is still not functional and most of us probably wonder what it is for anyway. Now, that amount of money buys you crossrail 1 at £8 bio (linking into Heathrow) and crossrail 2 at £6 bio (linking into to Gatwick) and Thameslink 2000 at £3 bio (linking Gatwick and Stansted) and leaves you £3 bio to build a rail link between the three airports. Now if you then also abolish the plan to introduce national identity cards (£11 bio), you can build a maglev system connecting Manchester and Birmingham to Heathrow (and Paddington). So what is the problem?

This old debate again... in the late 60s thru to mid 70s the plan was to build a new super airport (and combined port facility) at Maplin Sands in Essex, but the government backed out, apparently the sands are popular with wading birds etc. There was going to be new motorway links, the M12, would you believe-

http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/northernradials.shtml

All that changed in the 1970's when a world oil crisis and hard economic times made the Maplin option too expensive. The British Airports Authority, anticipating better times ahead, revived the idea of major growth at Stansted and in 1979 it was, once again, designated London's third airport.

Some other proposals

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_aviation/documents/page/dft_aviation_031855.pdf

The silly question for me is why airlines want to centralize there anyway? Heathrow is no where near central to the core of the population. There is still another 50+ million people that live outside London. Airports in the North of England should be used better.

The silly question for me is why airlines want to centralize there anyway? Heathrow is no where near central to the core of the population. There is still another 50+ million people that live outside London. Airports in the North of England should be used better.But London generates far more air traffic than the rest of the country combined. Most foreigners living in Britain reside in London. Most foreign business visitors, tourists, and foreign relatives (visiting the foreigners and foreign communities already living here) arrive in London. London is home to the most globalised sectors of our economy. And there are 18 million in London's metro alone - that leaves only about 42 million people, who are more British and much less inclined to travel, spread across the whole of the rest of the country.

Aside from that airlines have to centralise around hubs to make their operations efficient and profitable. Look at Alitalia for example. It has hardly ever had a profitable year. And all because the Italian government insists on making Rome a second hub even though market forces would dictate centralising operations at Milan. If there was a big opportunity in the north then our highly competitive airlines would exploit it. They don't do so because the opportunity is not there.

18m in the SE not Greater London. Theres only so many people going there because they dont have the choice; airlines should be encouraged to centralize at Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow especially; about 1/5 of the people flying into London are probably not even going to London. I would say phase it out and share traffic around the other airports. Heathrow could still exist but as a smaller airport.

18 million? are you having a laugh monkey?

London having most air traffic in the UK is correct but like No.1 said most people getting off from Heathrow don’t even go to London, but somewhere else around the UK.

I really do not know what all the fuss is about. Between the A4 and M4 there is more than enough space to build a standard length new runway.

JGG - it's not the space the runway occupies it's the flight path into it. This would be over a huge tranche of central and west London affecting hundreds of thousands of properties. Plus pollution levels (both sound and particulate) are already at max EU levels. Plus the Government committed itself to a caveate to the T5 go ahead that neither total noise nor total pollution would rise any further.

I read today that BAA has a 65% share of the UK airport market and 90% of the London airport market. In what other industry would such a monopoly be tollerated? Why are we protecting this private company? Surely there are massive efficiencies to be found? Split it up and let there be genuine competition from other airports around London and in the North. We listen to BAA and their preferred partner BA far too much.

18m in the SE not Greater London. Theres only so many people going there because they dont have the choice; airlines should be encouraged to centralize at Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow especially; about 1/5 of the people flying into London are probably not even going to London. I would say phase it out and share traffic around the other airports. Heathrow could still exist but as a smaller airport.18 million in London/SE are clearly in the catchment area for London airports. What means of "encourgaement" do you propose? Subsidy? Regional policy? Why not just let the market decide?? Britain's aviation industry is already less centralised than most others in Europe. And why on earth should Heathrow become "smaller" when the market clearly demands that it becomes much much bigger? Is there any solid reason or is it merely to placate the usual pathetic regional envy? :|

18 million? are you having a laugh monkey?No. London's metro population is about 18 million - and that's not even counting the entire SE.London having most air traffic in the UK is correct but like No.1 said most people getting off from Heathrow don’t even go to London, but somewhere else around the UK.No the overwhelming majority are most certainly NOT coming from elsewhere in the UK. Most are going to/from London/SE. I doubt that anything close to even the majority of UK passengers are from outside the SE let alone the total.

Insignia, some people use 18m for London's Metro Population but really its an exaggeration and means the whole of the SE in order to make it look more important and attractive for businesses- a bit like someone saying Birmingham has a population of 2.5m but really that would be the West Midlands.

Heathrow should become smaller and the other 4 airports should grow so traffic is shared equally rather than having congestion at Heathrow and room to spare at other airports.

^^ Actually its in line with other cities around the world. New York for instance is a city of 8mn, but has a metro of 21mn.

It would be mad to make Heathrow smaller when a new terminal is being built and air travel demand is at the highest it's ever been in Britain.

We should make better use of northern airports by connecting them better to the capital and elsewhere by Maglev. That way the cheaper cost of operating from the north will speak for itself and the market will switch. Good for Londons overcrowding, good for the north. Plus the northen airports aren't BAA = competition = good.

Insignia, some people use 18m for London's Metro Population but really its an exaggeration and means the whole of the SE in order to make it look more important and attractive for businesses- a bit like someone saying Birmingham has a population of 2.5m but really that would be the West Midlands.Sounds like another one doesn't understand the concept of a metro population. :|Heathrow should become smaller and the other 4 airports should grow so traffic is shared equally rather than having congestion at Heathrow and room to spare at other airports.What on earth is the point of spreading traffic evenly around five separate airports? What is your logic? To have a competitive hub, airlines need to keep traffic in one place, both short-haul and long-haul. If you spread traffic around several airports then none of them will offer a hub with enough frequencies and connections to match those of London's rival cities with their efficient centralised hubs. That will do nothing but damage London's competitiveness. Instead of coming out with every stupid suggestion under the sun, supported by no sensible arguments whatsoever, why don't we just do what is actually needed, and add runway capacity where it is demanded, and where it would offer most benefit to London's economy? What is so hard about knocking down a few houses and building a third runway at Heathrow? Nothing. It's simply a question of the government saying "yes" and allowing the aviation industry to build what it needs.

We should make better use of northern airports by connecting them better to the capital and elsewhere by Maglev. That way the cheaper cost of operating from the north will speak for itself and the market will switch. Good for Londons overcrowding, good for the north. Plus the northen airports aren't BAA = competition = good.We don't need to build a mega-£billion nationwide Maglev system at colossal taxpayers expense when a simple 3.8km strip of tarmac, built at zero cost to the taxpayer, offers a superior solution to the problem. Even if your Maglev system came free it still wouldn't be as good as being able to transfer in the same airport. I mean what kind of passenger will choose to spend an hour on a Maglev train transfering between flights in Manchester and London airports when in Paris, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam he can just transfer in the same terminal in a few minutes? Your proposal is nothing but a colossal waste of money and resources!! Why not just build the damn thing where it's needed!!

Heathrow - yeah, phase it out. Its rubbish.

London and the UK needs at least one genuine world class airport built immediately. I'm talking six runway mega airport with world class facilities and world class transport links to and from it. If it isn't done then we will regret it and suffer in the future. Heathrow is fucked - end of story. I cannot fathom why this isn't being done right now when competitors are building new airports and major European rivals are constantly upgrading their already far superior airports.

If a single hub is SO important why can't the airline industry find a location for it?
All seem to agree that a third runway at Heathrow is a short term fix and in 10-15 years time we will be faced with the same question again. Heathrow will be full and either we go for two hubs? If so why not go for two hubs now? Or we build another new hub airport?
I think it is pathetic that all the airline industry can do is suggest a short term fix that pisses millions of people off. Come on guys get it togther!

London and the UK needs at least one genuine world class airport built immediately. I'm talking six runway mega airport with world class facilities and world class transport links to and from it. If it isn't done then we will regret it and suffer in the future. Heathrow is fucked - end of story. I cannot fathom why this isn't being done right now when competitors are building new airports and major European rivals are constantly upgrading their already far superior airports.Heathrow isn't fucked. It's the biggest and busiest airport in Europe operates the largest volume of international traffic of any airport anywhere in the world. None of our European competitors is building an airport from scratch for the same reason that we will not: it's much more expensive than using and upgrading the facilites that you already have. Heathrow does have world class facilites. It probably has the best transport connections of any major world airport and Heathrow's retail outlets sell more than any other airport in the world. Heathrow Terminal 5, the largest building ever built in this country, and the largest construction project in Europe, will be three times the size of Paris's Terminal 2E, will open soon. Almost as soon as that is complete the Heathrow East project will commence rebuilding, in phases, the older three terminals. Ten years from now Heathrow's main terminals will be light airy intuituve spaces designed by Richard Rogers (HT5) and Norman Foster (T1-3). Recently the M25 has been expanded to 6-lanes of silk smooth motorway in each direction (surely the widest stretch of motorway in Europe?) and perhaps Crossrail will soon offer even better access to London than is currently offered by the 15 minute Heathrow Express to Paddington and the Piccadilly Line Tube. In short Heathrow will soon have everything it needs apart from the thing it needs most: the extra runway! Why not just let them build it and stop coming up with absurdly over-expensive alternative schemes to build nationwide Maglev networks and six runway airports somewhere in the Thames Estuary. Why? Why not just build the damn runway! It's only a strip of bloody tarmac with lights attached and we don't even have to pay for it!! :|

If a single hub is SO important why can't the airline industry find a location for it?:? This has to be the most absurd statement so far! The industry knows EXACTLY where it wants its hub..... HEATHROW!!! The entire industry wants it there!!All seem to agree that a third runway at Heathrow is a short term fix and in 10-15 years time we will be faced with the same question again. Heathrow will be full and either we go for two hubs? If so why not go for two hubs now? Or we build another new hub airport? I think it is pathetic that all the airline industry can do is suggest a short term fix that pisses millions of people off. Come on guys get it togther!You are going to piss nimbies off no matter where you build it. No-one wants to live next door to a mega-hub airport! For your information the first new runway in the SE will be added to Stansted (due for completeion in 2011) so the plan for bulding up a new hub with more space to expand is already under way. This will be followed by a third runway at Heathrow around 2020 (far too late - Paris will already be far ahead by then). Personally I think they should have done it the other way round. BA, the main company in need of a hub, doesn't operate any flights from Stansted and Stansted's main operators (low cost airlines) don't want or need the new runway there. The government has essentially forced BAA to build a runway where nobody wants or needs it before building one where it is desperately needed (Heathrow). Surely they should have done it the other way round?

:? This has to be the most absurd statement so far! The industry knows EXACTLY where it wants its hub..... HEATHROW!!! Blimy, my post wasn't that long. The second sentance points out that 2 and a short 3rd is not enough either. I know I know, I should have illustrated it with pictures. So where is the 4 runway airport going to be? Heathrow? After of course another arduous public inquiry over lengthening the short 3rd runway. And for redundancy and general keeping up with the Jone's 5 or even 6 would be rather nifty. Heathrow?

At this point you will say, no, we develop a second hub at Stanstead. 2 hubs is it now? But surely that splits up all those transfer flights we're all making and reduces the frequencies form a single location ya de ya de ya.

So again, where does the airline industry plan to have this single hub that is oh so important, with a good 4 runways, transport connections, and space for future expansion?

Blimy, my post wasn't that long. The second sentance points out that 2 and a short 3rd is not enough either. I know I know, I should have illustrated it with pictures. So where is the 4 runway airport going to be? Heathrow? After of course another arduous public inquiry over lengthening the short 3rd runway. And for redundancy and general keeping up with the Jone's 5 or even 6 would be rather nifty. Heathrow?

At this point you will say, no, we develop a second hub at Stanstead. 2 hubs is it now? But surely that splits up all those transfer flights we're all making and reduces the frequencies form a single location ya de ya de ya.

So again, where does the airline industry plan to have this single hub that is oh so important, with a good 4 runways, transport connections, and space for future expansion?1) The proposal is to add one new runway to Heathrow - not two.

2) To my knowledge the proposed new runway at Heathrow is not short.

3) Even if it were short that would still be very useful given that most of Heathrow's take-offs and landings are by small short-haul aircraft (A320 and B737 series) that don't need a full length runway anyway. That is entirely in keeping with Heathrow's role as a hub connecting short-haul to long-haul.

4) A two runway Stansted cannot compete against the competition. A three runway Heathrow could handle 120 million pax pa which is more than enough for it to remain competitive for a decade or even two which allows a long breathing space in which to build up Stansted as its heir. They should add a new runway to Heathrow first and then to Stansted along with a new terminal. Two three-runway airports would then both be large enough to operate as competitive hubs in their own right.

5) Unfortunately it is now too late to plan ahead before building what is already ten years overdue. Building up Stansted first will lead to the inevitable decline of London as Europe's premier aviation hub as neither Stansted nor Heathrow will be large enough to compete. Stansted won't be ready. It won't have the airline precense or the transport links. Meanwhile Heathrow will remain stuck where it is today - completely slot restrained.

6) The hub airline is BA and BA doesn't operate a single flight out of Stansted. It is going to take them three years to plan moving to their new Terminal 5. How long do you think it will take to plan a move to an entirely new airport? They will be in the uniquely bad position of hubbing at three airports serving the same city!! This huge juggling act wastes much time, energy, and money that BA could better use building up the Oneworld Alliance or merging with Iberia. The aviation industries of competing European cities (especially Paris) will benefit at London's expense.

Heathrow does have world class facilites. It probably has the best transport connections of any major world airport

Is this the same airport that isnt even integrated into the UK rail network and is bounded by two of the most congested stretches of road in Europe? The same airport that if it wants to expand will have to demolish nearby homes and businesses? Heathrow has two runways compared to Amsterdams' six. It has less capacity than CDG. There are a shortage of take-off slots due to these restrictions. How long do you think it will take to build Heathrow a third full runway bearing mind the T5 timeline? Its a crowded site with little room for expansion. Its archaic, its in the wrong location and needs replacing.

Heathrow isn't fucked. It's the biggest and busiest airport in Europe operates the largest volume of international traffic of any airport anywhere in the world. None of our European competitors is building an airport from scratch for the same reason that we will not: it's much more expensive than using and upgrading the facilites that you already have. Heathrow does have world class facilites. It probably has the best transport connections of any major world airport and Heathrow's retail outlets sell more than any other airport in the world. Heathrow Terminal 5, the largest building ever built in this country, and the largest construction project in Europe, will be three times the size of Paris's Terminal 2E, will open soon. Almost as soon as that is complete the Heathrow East project will commence rebuilding, in phases, the older three terminals. Ten years from now Heathrow's main terminals will be light airy intuituve spaces designed by Richard Rogers (HT5) and Norman Foster (T1-3). Recently the M25 has been expanded to 6-lanes of silk smooth motorway in each direction (surely the widest stretch of motorway in Europe?) and perhaps Crossrail will soon offer even better access to London than is currently offered by the 15 minute Heathrow Express to Paddington and the Piccadilly Line Tube. In short Heathrow will soon have everything it needs apart from the thing it needs most: the extra runway! Why not just let them build it and stop coming up with absurdly over-expensive alternative schemes to build nationwide Maglev networks and six runway airports somewhere in the Thames Estuary. Why? Why not just build the damn runway! It's only a strip of bloody tarmac with lights attached and we don't even have to pay for it!! :|The biggest problem in this scenario is that all those concerned: politicians, the carriers and BAA are only thinking in the short-term (ie 10-20 years), when in reality we need a long-term fix. Then again what do you expect - we live in a free-market economy where companies are answerable to shareholders and politicians controlled by the electorate. That is why you agree with the short-term philosophy of a 3rd runway and 6th terminal because after that - then what? The orders to buy up tens of thousands of homes could be far more than building a new airport, but that is what will probably happen if Heathrow needs any future expansion.

For these sort of projects, we need to push the bar further than we have before. I should also note that while the like of CDG and Frankfurt are rapidly expanding - its because they have nothing to stop them - they don't have cities that constrain their development. There are no thousands of homes around CDG or Frankfurt cause they are just outside the major urban area.

Also Crossrail doesn't offer westward connections from Heathrow, because the line would essentially be the Heathrow Express and it because of this that future growth will continue to be strained because there isn't enough connections to the airport from outside London. A goal of Heathrow was to reduce pollution, well its a major incovenience to get to the airport westward of the M25 unless you have a car...which again erodes that ability for growth.

Also while Manchester-Heathrow terminal hubbing sounds a bit odd, capacity could be released by the ability for greater connections, but such a maglev route would be primarily for intercity.

Gradually moving all operations to Stansted or a new Thames Gateway airport would I suspect be very benefical to London - not only creating an airport like no other on the planet with so many connections that the mind boggles, but building in an area that can sustain the growth.

So while you might be interested in the short-term dominance of London, I'm looking at the long-term dominance of London, and Heathrow isn't where we should be looking.

^^^ All very true. Then there are those irritating 'holding stacks' that build up with even the smallest problem. Queues for planes to take off and taxi to the terminals. As soon as a runway is taken out of use for servicing or some other problem there is chaos as there is no spare capacity.

Is this the same airport that isnt even integrated into the UK rail network and is bounded by two of the most congested stretches of road in Europe?The M25 is no longer congested near Heathrow. It has recently been expanded to six lanes in each direction. And what do you mean it isn't integrated into the rail network? Have you never heard of the Heathrow Express or Piccadilly Line?The same airport that if it wants to expand will have to demolish nearby homes and businesses?Very few.Heathrow has two runways compared to Amsterdams' six.Right.... so build aa new runway damnit! Amstedram's six runways cannot all be used at once.It has less capacity than CDG.No once HT5 is complete it will have far more gates and floorspace than CDG (and orders of magnitude more than any other UK airport too). All it needs is the damn runway.There are a shortage of take-off slots due to these restrictions.No the shortage of slots is due to one reason and one reason alone - a lack of runway capacity. Nothing else.How long do you think it will take to build Heathrow a third full runway bearing mind the T5 timeline?And how much longer than that do you think it will take to build up a replacement to the same level? You will need to build HT5 x 3 and build two or three new runways to bring another airport to the same or superior level - not to mention massive investment in transport infrastructuire too. It's much faster just to add the new runway to Heathrow.Its a crowded site with little room for expansion. Its archaic, its in the wrong location and needs replacing.It may be crowded but it has a superb location and will not look archaic in the slightest once the terminal are vast airy spaces designed by Richard Rogers (HT5) and Norman Foster (T1-3). There is an obvious space for a new runway between the A4 and M4.

^^^ All very true. Then there are those irritating 'holding stacks' that build up with even the smallest problem. Queues for planes to take off and taxi to the terminals. As soon as a runway is taken out of use for servicing or some other problem there is chaos as there is no spare capacity.The holding stacks are caused by a shortage of runway caapcity. The obvious solution is to build another runway. :|

The roads around Heathrow are a nightmare and amongst the most congested in Europe. Even if we assume your statement that the six-lane section of the M25 is now free-flowing is true, what about the rest of it? The six lane section is two miles long if that. So thats great if anyone is solely getting to Heathrow via the six-lane stretch of the M25! What about the rest of the M25? Free-flowing? I dont think so. The M4 at Heathrow can be horrendeous. Then theres the M40 and the M3 etc, etc - not nice in rush hour. Heathrow is linked to the rail network by the Heathrow Express and the tube! Thats great if your on the Piccadilly line or in the vacinity of Paddington! What about the rest of the country? Can I get a train from Luton direct to Heathrow? The answer is no. From Reading? No I cant. From Bristol, Southampton, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow? No to all of them. So you think that a tube service into Heathrow and a train service to and from Paddington, with bus and road traffic using some of the most congested roads in Europe give Heathrow the best transport connections of any major world airport?

The roads around Heathrow are a nightmare and amongst the most congested in Europe. Even if we assume your statement that the six-lane section of the M25 is now free-flowing is true, what about the rest of it? The six lane section is two miles long if that. So thats great if anyone is solely getting to Heathrow via the six-lane stretch of the M25! What about the rest of the M25? Free-flowing? I dont think so. The M4 at Heathrow can be horrendeous. Then theres the M40 and the M3 etc, etc - not nice in rush hour. Heathrow is linked to the rail network by the Heathrow Express and the tube! Thats great if your on the Piccadilly line or in the vacinity of Paddington! What about the rest of the country? Can I get a train from Luton direct to Heathrow? The answer is no. From Reading? No I cant. From Bristol, Southampton, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow? No to all of them. So you think that a tube service into Heathrow and a train service to and from Paddington, with bus and road traffic using some of the most congested roads in Europe give Heathrow the best transport connections of any major world airport?The M25's bottleneck near Heathrow has largely been cleared. The motorway is now 12 lanes wide (ie 6 per side) between junctions 14 and 15 and also 10 lanes wide (ie 5 per side) between junctions 12 and 14. The remainder of the south western section is 8 lanes wide (ie 4 per side). The Highways Agency plans to widen almost all of the rest of the M25 to 8 lanes (ie 4 per side) in the near future. Other countries also have congested motorways at rush hour. I used to live in Paris and coming back into the city on a Sunday evening was always a nightmare.

The train links I mentioned are indeed excellent. They are certainly far better than anything at JFK (or other New York airports) and arguably better than CDG too (you cannot get so fast into the city centre from CDG as on the Heathrow Express). People coming to Heathrow by rail from elsewhere in Britain can transfer via London. It won't take them long using the Heathrow Express. There may not be dedicated services to every other part of the country but then no other major world airport has that either. Many of the most celebrated airports in the world have but a single approach road and rail link from the city (Osaka Kansai, Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok, Singapore Changi, Shanghai Pudong etc).

The reason Heathrow is so popular with the world's airlines is precisely because of the excellent location and transport links. If it was just as easy to get to the other London airports they would be just as happy to fly to them.

Just flew into Heathrow this week after a transatlantic flight. Just like to pass on just what a foul airport it is. the scruffiest, dirtiest and nastiest that I have been to anywhere in the world.

Just flew into Heathrow this week after a transatlantic flight. Just like to pass on just what a foul airport it is. the scruffiest, dirtiest and nastiest that I have been to anywhere in the world.

where were you flying in from? it's no worse than LAX or JFK or Philadelphia imo. in fact it has a lot more facilities and amenities than all of them. however it's definitely a depressing experience flying into heathrow after you've been somewhere sunny and vibrant. perhaps it's more to do with the sullen british weather and people.

Yeah and we really want to start building 12 and 10 lane motorways everywhere. It can't cope long term.

where were you flying in from? it's no worse than LAX or JFK or Philadelphia imo. in fact it has a lot more facilities and amenities than all of them. however it's definitely a depressing experience flying into heathrow after you've been somewhere sunny and vibrant. perhaps it's more to do with the sullen british weather and people.

Have to take your word about LAX, JFK and Philly. Although, I'll be going to Philly later this year.

I'd been in Milwaukee, changed at Chicago O'Hare.

Surely the whole point of a hub airport is that you can't "phase it out". If half of Heathrow's flights are moved to Stansted/Thames Estuary then what do the people who need to change planes do? Other than fly via Frankfurt...

Quite apart from which there are tens of thousands of airport-dependent jobs in west London and the M4 corridor which would be lost if Heathrow was no longer there.

Yeah and we really want to start building 12 and 10 lane motorways everywhere. It can't cope long term.Why not? You either spread the air and car traffic around (which deprives Britain of a world class hub and thereby destroys our world beating aviation industry) or you keep operations and pollution concentrated at one major airport, be it Heathrow or elsewhere, that will require decent infrastructure to be competitive. Why not just build what is needed? Why are so many people advocating reinventing the wheel when all that's required is a relatively modest expansion of existing facilities? So much of the investment has been spent already. We already have the expanded roads and express rail link. The improved terminal environment is already under construction with more to follow (ie T5 + Heathrow East). All we need to do now is add the runway. So let's just get on with it and build the damn thing....

Heathrow Terminal 5, the largest building ever built in this country, and the largest construction project in Europe, will be three times the size of Paris's Terminal 2E, will open soon............... Recently the M25 has been expanded to 6-lanes of silk smooth motorway in each direction (surely the widest stretch of motorway in Europe?) :|

And we will have the opportunity to see how the Baa have beaten the design of this behemoth into mediocrity.

As for the silky smooth highway, do you ever listen to traffic reports. See how often the stretch between Junctions 12 & 16 gets mentioned; and it is only six lanes for a relatively short distance hence the bottlenecks as traffic goes from 6 to 4 to 3 lanes just in time to meet a junction with another major motorway whether travelling east or west.

I'm puzzled as to why the UK aviation industry is so 'risk hungry'. Most companies are 'risk averse'. A significant risk, no matter what your take on the Heathrow debate is that expansion will not be approved or at the very least delayed. This constriction and unpredictability of delay is not going to go away as even the most hardened supporter has to acknowledge there are those against. There are other major risks too such as poor transport not getting upgraded. Or, say an aircraft were to crash on a city, anywhere in the world, on the approach to an airport. That would lead to calls for Heathrow's closure. If it were London I doubt the airport would ever re-open.

The train links I mentioned are indeed excellent. They are certainly far better than anything at JFK (or other New York airports) and arguably better than CDG too (you cannot get so fast into the city centre from CDG as on the Heathrow Express). People coming to Heathrow by rail from elsewhere in Britain can transfer via London. It won't take them long using the Heathrow Express. There may not be dedicated services to every other part of the country but then no other major world airport has that either. Many of the most celebrated airports in the world have but a single approach road and rail link from the city (Osaka Kansai, Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok, Singapore Changi, Shanghai Pudong etc).
I don't think it's really bad at the moment, but I think Amsterdam is a nice example of very good transpot links, because the airport is completely integrated in the national railway system. You can't just reach Amsterdam, but there are direct train links in all directions, to all the big cities (Utrecht, The Hague, Rotterdam, international trains to Antwerp, Brussels, Berlin and Paris...)
Having to go via the city every time is not a good thing, you're needlessly congesting the centre of town and making transport links a lot harder.
Straight links to places like Reading, Guildford/Gatwick airport, Basingstoke and Clapham Junction would make everything much easier.

Just flew into Heathrow this week after a transatlantic flight. Just like to pass on just what a foul airport it is. the scruffiest, dirtiest and nastiest that I have been to anywhere in the world.

You ever been to Geneva? That's a poor airport, maybe worse than Heathrow.

And we will have the opportunity to see how the Baa have beaten the design of this behemoth into mediocrity.HT5 is anything but a mediocrity. It will have an truly vast interior space flooded with natural light and a single gracefully arched roof echoing the grand Victorian railway termini. I think the interior of HT5 will be more spectacular than any of Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok (the ripples are less grand than HT5's single arch), Shanghai Pudong (smaller), Singapore Changi (smaller and less ambitious), Osaka Kansai (smaller), or Guangzhou Baiyun (smaller). Perhaps only Beijing and Madrid will be more spectacular - and they are both more recent designs and even larger projects.As for the silky smooth highway, do you ever listen to traffic reports. See how often the stretch between Junctions 12 & 16 gets mentioned; and it is only six lanes for a relatively short distance hence the bottlenecks as traffic goes from 6 to 4 to 3 lanes just in time to meet a junction with another major motorway whether travelling east or west.No the western section of the M25 goes from 6 to 5 to 4 (not 6,4,3) and the only sections that are still slow are those still under construction.

heh I've been to Geneva. Id say it was a bad airport but not as bad as Heathrow.

HT5 is anything but a mediocrity. It will have an truly vast interior space flooded with natural light and a single gracefully arched roof echoing the grand Victorian railway termini. I think the interior of HT5 will be more spectacular than any of Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok (the ripples are less grand than HT5's single arch), Shanghai Pudong (smaller), Singapore Changi (smaller and less ambitious), Osaka Kansai (smaller), or Guangzhou Baiyun (smaller). Perhaps only Beijing and Madrid will be more spectacular - and they are both more recent designs and even larger projects.No the western section of the M25 goes from 6 to 5 to 4 (not 6,4,3) and the only sections that are still slow are those still under construction.

Don't believe the hype. The only publicly available renderings and 3D interiors are the Richard Rogers Parternship publicity renderings from some time ago. Architecturally Terminal 5 presents itself as a huge shed from the M25, albeit a wobbly shed, approaching it off the motorway it is concealed by it's multistorey car park. Ignore the currently available renderings of the 'full of light' departures level as it does not include the architectural scale zonal beacons, the 3 tiers of check-in facilities and the vast amount of BAA retail and media not least that enclosing the 'chimneys'.

The passenger/client is led through security and down a level to gate seating which is essentially a shopping mall level that the passenger have to traverse before finding their gate seating areas. The lack of clarity to gate seating areas is manifest which is why wayfinding is so complex on this sheme as against the also RRp designed Madrid where wayfinding is transparent.

There is a BAA Retail generated walk through that indicates that passengers will be directed through retail areas prior to being directed to their gate seating.

Any drawings/ 3D views of the above are BAA copyright and I cannot publish them but someone else may be able to access them.

T5 is a sad monument to what might have been

It is obvious that Paris or Madrid will become the major european hubs due to the BAA not delivering the goods and owning 'project managers/ cost consultants' who think cost cutting = value engineering on the T5 project

I have only my own Knowledge of the M25 and I have listened to many Cds whilst stationary between j12 & j14

T5 will not be an internationally great terminal. It will operate functionally and as one big barn at best.

Monkey, blag a trip out to T5 and see how big the shadow is between the idea and the reality.

having been past T5 a couple of times while taxiing on the plane, it looks notable only for its gigantic scale. it is a behemoth but no beauty.

I must admit T5 looks quite attractive to me as well. I don't think the status of London as the major hub of Europe will be compromised anytime soon...

The environment must be put first before any airport. I am no nimby, I believe in going upwards in our cities with skyscrapers so that we don't increase urban spread, and for the same reason, airports & airlines must be held accountable for their actions.

Utilisation of other airports in the South East and in the North of England must be a priority.

The environment must be put first before any airport. I am no nimby, I believe in going upwards in our cities with skyscrapers so that we don't increase urban spread, and for the same reason, airports & airlines must be held accountable for their actions.

Utilisation of other airports in the South East and in the North of England must be a priority.The environment is better served by concentrating pollution in one place rather than spreading it evenly across the southest or entire country.

Don't believe the hype. The only publicly available renderings and 3D interiors are the Richard Rogers Parternship publicity renderings from some time ago. Architecturally Terminal 5 presents itself as a huge shed from the M25, albeit a wobbly shed, approaching it off the motorway it is concealed by it's multistorey car park. Ignore the currently available renderings of the 'full of light' departures level as it does not include the architectural scale zonal beacons, the 3 tiers of check-in facilities and the vast amount of BAA retail and media not least that enclosing the 'chimneys'.

The passenger/client is led through security and down a level to gate seating which is essentially a shopping mall level that the passenger have to traverse before finding their gate seating areas. The lack of clarity to gate seating areas is manifest which is why wayfinding is so complex on this sheme as against the also RRp designed Madrid where wayfinding is transparent.

There is a BAA Retail generated walk through that indicates that passengers will be directed through retail areas prior to being directed to their gate seating.

Any drawings/ 3D views of the above are BAA copyright and I cannot publish them but someone else may be able to access them.

T5 is a sad monument to what might have been

It is obvious that Paris or Madrid will become the major european hubs due to the BAA not delivering the goods and owning 'project managers/ cost consultants' who think cost cutting = value engineering on the T5 project

I have only my own Knowledge of the M25 and I have listened to many Cds whilst stationary between j12 & j14

T5 will not be an internationally great terminal. It will operate functionally and as one big barn at best.

Monkey, blag a trip out to T5 and see how big the shadow is between the idea and the reality.Madrid and Paris will not be greater hubs than Heathrow if Heathrow gets the third runway as I am advocating. I don't care if there is masses of retail in HT5. In fact I think it's a good thing. Plenty of shops to browse makes the transfer time pass faster. And the BAA renderings do show the retail space and also show that it does not infringe upon the fantastic views over the apron through the vast windows, nor can it detract from the graceful arching roof, nor can it diminish the sheer scale of the single volume space. And I have been past and through Heathrow several times recently and I have noted the progress on site. So far as I can see we are getting exactly what is shown on the renderings:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12875.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12876.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12877.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12878.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12879.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12880.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12883.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/ph-12882.jpg

This obsession with remaining Europe's 'hub' for as long as possible is a little ridiculous. It seems to depend on a strategy of increasing capacity at Heathrow ad infinitum. As soon as one terminal is completed, another is being mooted...or a runway. Where are we supposed to be heading here - to a 20 terminal, 8 runway airport with flight paths covering the whole of SE England?! No thank you.

In the long term, Paris and Madrid are bound to overtake Heathrow in passenger numbers. Why? Population density in France and Spain is nothing like that in the UK, and they have room to expand. Let them. I live in London, and all I care about is that when I want to fly somewhere, I can from London...and London's 8 million population will see to it that this is always possible.

Do I care that businessmen from Philadelphia en route to Dubai are changing flights in Madrid and not London (and polluting Spanish airspace and not ours)? Don't be ridiculous. This local 'my cock is bigger than your cock' battle for supremacy is all a bit pathetic and has to stop.

This obsession with remaining Europe's 'hub' for as long as possible is a little ridiculous. It seems to depend on a strategy of increasing capacity at Heathrow ad infinitum. As soon as one terminal is completed, another is being mooted...or a runway. Where are we supposed to be heading here - to a 20 terminal, 8 runway airport with flight paths covering the whole of SE England?! No thank you.

In the long term, Paris and Madrid are bound to overtake Heathrow in passenger numbers. Why? Population density in France and Spain is nothing like that in the UK, and they have room to expand. Let them. I live in London, and all I care about is that when I want to fly somewhere, I can from London...and London's 8 million population will see to it that this is always possible.

Do I care that businessmen from Philadelphia en route to Dubai are changing flights in Madrid and not London (and polluting Spanish airspace and not ours)? Don't be ridiculous. This local 'my cock is bigger than your cock' battle for supremacy is all a bit pathetic and has to stop.


Couldnt have put it better myself, well done sir :cheers:

Is T5 exclusively for BA?

Is T5 exclusively for BA?BA and Qantas.

This obsession with remaining Europe's 'hub' for as long as possible is a little ridiculous. It seems to depend on a strategy of increasing capacity at Heathrow ad infinitum. As soon as one terminal is completed, another is being mooted...or a runway. Where are we supposed to be heading here - to a 20 terminal, 8 runway airport with flight paths covering the whole of SE England?! No thank you.

In the long term, Paris and Madrid are bound to overtake Heathrow in passenger numbers. Why? Population density in France and Spain is nothing like that in the UK, and they have room to expand. Let them. I live in London, and all I care about is that when I want to fly somewhere, I can from London...and London's 8 million population will see to it that this is always possible.

Do I care that businessmen from Philadelphia en route to Dubai are changing flights in Madrid and not London (and polluting Spanish airspace and not ours)? Don't be ridiculous. This local 'my cock is bigger than your cock' battle for supremacy is all a bit pathetic and has to stop.The aviation industry is one of the only world beating industries that Britain still has. It is second only to finance in ensuring London's continuing status as Europe's premier world city. It's worth £billions and God knows how many jobs. It's nice to know that you want to hand over this advantage to our rivals. Madrid doesn't have a hope in hell of rivalling London as an aviation hub, despite the nice new terminal, indeed I doubt it can overtake Frankfurt. However the largest threat is from London's most powerful and consistent rival - Paris. Paris will snap every opportunity it can to displace London and crown itself as Europe's premier world city and you want to feed it. SE England's population density is not a problem. All we need to is knock down a few houses between the M4 and A4 and bury a road. This is far from being an insurmountable problem and it won't cost the taxpayer a penny.

I disagree, profoundly.

Monkey - you make a lot of sensible comments on these boards, but not here. You suggest accelerating development at Heathrow (well beyond the needs of the local population) for the nebulous reason of maintaining London's position 'as Europe's premier world city'. Stop for a second and think what you actually mean by this. Is there a leader board somewhere with

1. London
2. Paris etc

that we have to maintain position in? And if there was, should we care? Does the city that finishes top at the end of each year get to represent Europe in a global competition where it can nervously size itself up against cities in Asia and North America? I think the whole thing is very sad.

London is a successful city - and it has the critical mass to ensure it will continue to be an exciting and cosmopolitan city to live in for those who choose to do so.

It does not need a pointlessly oversized airport to prove itself, and all this neo-Thatcherite bollocks about retaining its position on the world stage is little more than a scare tactic used by developers to push through plans which will do nothing to improve the quality of life of Londoners.

If anyone wants to suggest building extra capacity in the Underground network (Crossrail, for example) or new suburban rail capacity - I'm in complete agreement. It will benefit everyone who lives here. But suggest that we continue expanding an airport simply so that we can keep pace with others in Europe and win a 'League of Airports'...pointless.

The skies above Heathrow, which is in a densely populated area, are crowded enough already - as are the roads around it. In the long term, London will not be able to expand at the same rate as the other cities already mentioned above, so we should call a halt to further development sooner rather than later before too many more people suffer a reduction in their quality of life.

^ You are far too complacent. London is clearly in competition with Paris. Global companies choosing whether to invest their £billions in their new European headquarters in either London or Paris will certainly take transport connectivity to the rest of the Europe and the world into account. Heathrow, and aviation in general, is absolutely critical to London's economy. Aviation itself is one of the fastest growing and most valuable industries in the world - and we are the leaders. The impact on the wider economy is much grater still. Winning the competition is worth huge numbers of jobs and £billions in business - and this does have a profound impact on our lives. Money doesn't grow on trees. Ultimately the wealth that we all enjoy has to be generated somewhere and somehow. If you want an example of a genuinely irrelevant dick-measuring contest then look no further than the World Cup - or indeed sporting competitons in general. However world class industries are not something I am happy to see given away to our rivals so complacently.

And business will migrate away from London simply because Heathrow has terminals and not 8? I think not.

Continual expansion of Heathrow is simply not an option. This needs to be accepted, and strategies for maintaining a healthy economy in London should be built from that start point.

And business will migrate away from London simply because Heathrow has terminals and not 8? I think not.Of course they will move away if London ceases to offer unique advantages in terms of global connectivity. Right now London is probably the best city in the world to locate a Global HQ for high skilled service companies whose employees need to travel widely/frequently.Continual expansion of Heathrow is simply not an option. This needs to be accepted, and strategies for maintaining a healthy economy in London should be built from that start point.I have never advocated continual expansion of Heathrow. I have advocated building the first new runway in the SE at Heathrow and subsequent ones at Stansted. HT5 and the third runway should have been built ten years ago.

Interesting arguments guys.

Its undoubtably clear that London is chosen as European and World HQs for so many companies because of its connectivity.

I know someone who works in the Citigroup Tower (25 Canada Square), who travels regularly across the world helping implement new systems with his base in London. In this respect it is obvious that London was chosen as Citibank's European Headquarters (just about the worlds biggest bank btw)

As this is a skyscraper forum, the knock-on effect is that Citigroup wanted to house all their workers at their Euro HQ in a tall tower, ultimately being 25CS which adds bulk if not glamour to the skyline.

If Heathrow were to lose its prime status as a hub, London would lose its prime status as a business centre. Gatwick and Stanstead are just not up to the standards to compete on global terms as yet.

The environment is better served by concentrating pollution in one place rather than spreading it evenly across the southest or entire country.

Not if at least 40 million passengers that fly from Heathrow are travelling by road from accross the country to get there. The cost of fuel per head is cheaper by plane than by car.

Interesting article in The Independent on Sunday Business Section today. Abigail Townsend writes about the BAA and Heathrow. Only a short article but food for thought for those in this thread.

http://www.independent.co.uk/search/simple.do?publicationId=55&includeSectionId=38&xsuccessUrl=index.jsp%3FtemplateName%3Dresult&xerrorUrl=index.jsp%3FtemplateName%3Dresult&searchEngineName=lucySearch1&includeSubSections=true&pageLength=25&articleType=news&sortString=by_date_desc&maxRows=500&searchString=abigail+townsend

Not if at least 40 million passengers that fly from Heathrow are travelling by road from accross the country to get there. The cost of fuel per head is cheaper by plane than by car.But they don't travel from the rest of Britain in large numbers do they? London generates far more long-haul business traffic than the rest of Britain combined and the demand from foreigners is to come to London too. Nowhere else in Britain can sustain demand for a wide variety of long haul flights. If they could then the airlines would offer the services. Manchester has a few trans-Atlantic services and a few other odds and ends but it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of traffic through Manchester and other regional airports is catering to local leisure demand. Most flights from Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool etc is to leisure destinations in Europe and the Mediterranean. Even the long-haul services from Manchester primarily cater to outbound local tourists, places like Miami and the Caribbean, rather than serious business destinations like, say, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bombay, or Los Angeles.

It is now far too late for Heathrow to competed with AMS, FRA or CDG. They are all larger airports with plenty of expansion space, and their home airlines offer far more destinations world wide.
Lufthansa flies from its 2 German hubs Frankfurt and Munich to many worldwide destinations and as it is in the star alliance, the worlds biggest by far and still expanding faster than any other, it has avery competitive edge.
AF KLM, the french and dutch flag carriers merged last year to create the worlds largest international airline by far, flying from AMS and CDG.
All these airlines have been buying aircraft and expanding routes for the last decade.
The european airlines have been able to expand freely because of their unprecedented hub growth rates.
Heathrow hasn't grown since 84, with T4 and BA has never had a single terminal transfer base, unlike its euro rivals, who have had this luxury for decades. Euro airports and their airlines offer direct connections to far more european destinations and long haul destintaions, especially Asia, this has been the case for over 10 years now, BA used to fly to many airports throughout Asia and Aus, now it flies to Tokyo, HK, BKK singapore and Beijing, oh and now only SYdney in AUS, used to be Mel, Brisbane and Perth many flts daily. BA hasn't bought any Long Haul jets for ages and its short haul business is being undermined by both the better connected euro flag airines and budget carriers.
Also T5 is too small even now let alone 20yrs time to accept BA and the oneworld alliance members to operate under a single roof so the flight connection nightmare at london will be the same as evr.
In Lehmans terms, we were out of the count 20 years ago compared with euro airports and airlines and this will never change.
However, it is utter shite that businesses will flock abroad because a person cannot fly from Zagreb to Mexico city, or Denver to Ankara via LHR. A massive percentage of people and xargo now fly to the UK, and London via a european hub, thus the access to transport is not an issue with regard to business being taken away from UK. Look at NYC USA, the worlds largest city economy BY FAR and not one airport in the top 10.
Fair enough, UK ailines, well BA have shit out thru the usual debacle that is infrastructure development in the UK. But the fact remains that we havn't been for some time now, and never again will be Europes big hub airport.
That went out the window when some bright spark chose an old WW2 airfield surrounded by massive urban areas as the UKs principle airport base.

And thousands of acres of wild marsh and unspoilt country side being blitxed to form a vast concrete airport, in Kent, nowadays with the govornment under pressure to take the environment and climate change seriously and local people in airport zones frantically fighting expanssion, a new bloody airport, please, a peice of spin or a pipe dream, what evr way you look at it, its never going to happen. This isn't China!

So in a nutshell - London won't have a 150mppa megaport like Paris Franfurt or Madrid may have in 25 yrs time, but will the economy suffer, no, why because 300mppa can still get to London relatively easily via its 3 major airports which will all end up around the 100mppa mark and will all be connected to the world relatively easily by direct flights or 1 stops in europe.
BA may shit out, however it has basically been downsizing for a decade now so it probably won't be all that bad.

Actually, just looking at T5 there are no small aircraft stands, at all for large AC. Maybe BA will pull out of short haul, other than domestic, all together and concentrate on direct connection LH flts worldwide (even tho now it seems to be dropping LH routes weekly), dunno - weird tactics by BA!

Still, they have suffered cos they never had a good base to operate from.

BTW Manc and other regional airports don't offr LH flights cos its easier and cheaper to connect via Eurohubs. Malaysia pulled ot of Manc flts last month. Manc like other regional airports will never offer many LH flts, not competitive.

Oh, and also look at Emirates, they too are another reason why BA suffers, they
offer many connections to asia via dubai to many uk airports.

But UK business won't suffer cos heathrow can't expand, thtas total utter crap.

DangerVolts there are quite a few factual inaccuracies in those last two posts! Here I go....

1) BA does have a good base to operate from. London Heathrow and Gatwick dominate by far the largest aviation market in the world. London generally has added new traffic much faster than any other major European city thanks to the explosive growth of budget carriers Easyjet and Ryanair.

2) HT5 is huge - much bigger than any terminal development at any of Paris, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam. HT5 is built to handle a whopping 30 million pax pa (three times the size of Paris's 10 million pax Terminal 2E).

3) HT5 has loads of stands for small aircraft. BA's entire Heathrow operation will be operated from HT5 alone - and BA operates loads of small 737s and A320s on its European and short-haul routes.

4) Air France-KLM is only merged at the top. In operational terms it is still two separate airlines serving two separate markets from two separate hubs. If BA merge with Iberia it will make an even larger airline - but it will make little difference to Heathrow either way as Iberia will continue to hub from Madrid.

5) BA remains the world's largest long-haul airline (unless Air France and KLM are counted as one) and BA is much more profitable than its European rivals. Add in Virgin Atlantic as well (no other major European hub is base for two major long-haul airlines) and Heathrow's advantage is even greater. What long-haul routes has BA dropped from Heathrow in the last couple of years? I can think of additions (Shanghai and Indian routes) but the only dropped routes are those in Saudi (and BMI has taken up the slack) and Melbourne via Singapore (the same number of flights from Heathrow..... just that Oneworld partner Qantas now does the Singapore-Melbourne leg). You mention Asia and Australia but there are far more flights to the Far East and Australia from Heathrow than from any European airport. London-Hong Kong alone has more fights than from all French cities to all Chinese cities combined and has grown hugely in the last year. Ditto German to Chinese cities. Second comes London-Singapore which is also much busier than any other route between any other European and any other Asian cities.

6) Star Alliance is the biggest in the world but then Star has a major precense at Heathrow too. A passenger flying from New York to Bangkok can transfer in Heathrow from a United flight to a Thai Airways flight. Ditto from San Francisco to Hannover using United and Lufthansa via Heathrow. Codesharing is of limited utility in any case. Websites like Expedia allow you to book connections with airlines from different alliances.

7) Good old Oneworld will become almost as big with the inclusion of JAL. Generally Oneworld members are far more profitable than airlines from the other two alliances.

OK, so BA is very profitable, but it has cut many routes. I've flown to Brisbane, Santiago and Jakarta via KL all with BA, but now they don't offer these routes, and many more like them. They once had fleet plans of over 80 747-400s back in the mid 90s, plus many 777-2/300s. They havn't bought any long haul AC in many years, ulike most other Asian, European and even US based airlines over the last 6 yrs. Why did it have to cut so many AC orders and routes in order to stay profitable when foreign carriers serving these destinations into heathrow are striving to increase capacity. The only logical answer it seems to me is because heathrow ariport cannot offer the efficient connection times of AMS, FRA or CDG. Oh and Paris CDG 2 handles well over 10mppa. 2A,B,C,D and F have been running as AF hubs for many yrs now and form a very effiecient transfer hub, 2E was only an additional terminal to the CDG2 project. There are also 2G and H under construction as well.
Yes HT5 is massive but where are the short haul stands? They all look like widebody AC stands to me. And if HT5 is so massive, why can it not accommodate all oneworld carriers, not only long haul AA, CX, JL but also the european short haul carriers including Iberia and Finnair. If it could, then oneworld would have an unrivalled Euro base.

Tho away from BA you have are wrong when you say that expanding euro hubs are threatening UK economy, as for a start people will always fly into London any how via eurozone if they want, but thats their choice of airline, nothing more. And, yes, Star will also have their own hub at LHR namely Heathrow T1/2, or Heathrow East as it will be renamed eventually.
Plus remember London has 3 major aiports serving the city, all capable of further expansion ,maybe not to 4/5 runway golioths like CDG or AMS but combined still kick ass capacity wise. Only Paris has 1 other 'major' airport, namely Orly, which is trounced by Stansted, let alone Gatwick and it can't expand either. Besides, after CDG2 there are no real plans to expand the airport further, and there will be local opposition against any, FRA really can't get much bigger airfield wise and AMS can't further expand its central terminal
setup much more either, constrained ironically by its own airfield layout.

Oh, and generally, the only unprofitable airlines in the other alliances are the US ones, even AA is still struggling to stay above water. Other than that, airlines like Singapore, Thai, and ANA are certainly not unpfofitable. Plus Star is the only alliance which is including mainland chinese carrier, Air China, soon - surely this holds an advantage. Tho I heard China Eastern were to join oneworld a few yrs ago but heard nothing since.

^ BA is the world's largest operator of 747-400s (x 57). Only JAL has more 747s (x 72) but they include older versions and 12 of them are cargo planes. BA also has a loads of 777-200s (x 43). In terms of new long-haul orders BA has recently reserved 10 x B777-300ER's on Beoing's production schedule but they will not firm up the order until they have struck a deal with the unions on pensions.

The situation in China is confusing. Air China has agreed to join Star and China Southern will join Skyteam. That leaves China Eastern as Oneworld's obvious Chinese partner. However with Cathay Pacific poised to take over Dragonair then perhaps Dragonair can be brought into the Oneworld alliance and Cathay/Oneworld can finally get penetrating access to the mainland China market. This is complicated by the fact that Air China (Star) and Cathay (Oneworld) have stakes in each other. China Eastern's future Oneworld membership could be poisoned by China Eastern's continuing hostility towards Cathay's applications to open the route from Hong Kong to Shanghai. However it should be remembered that alliance membership will not always bring about an increase in capacity - sometimes quite the opposite. JAL, currently in some financial difficulties, recently dropped one of it's daily frequencies from Tokyo to London precisely because it is joining Oneworld and will be able to codeshare with BA's flights on that route.

Are Virgin getting T2 ?

JAL in finacial difficulties, so oneworlds airlines are all more profitable eh?! ;)

Seriously tho, they have been operating 777s to heathrow for sometime now, whereas before it was all 747-400s.

Also oneworld has lost out before to Star, namely Canadian being taken over by Air Canada. And Swiss were due to join oneworld but then dfected to Star at the last minute. It looks like oneworld may also be the only alliance with trouble entering China, cos of the difficulties you pointed out.
BA has 57 747 400s, but it had ordered a total of 88 some time back, deliveries up to 2001 I think, however it cancelled these and brought 777 200 orders fwd instead.
The ten 777 300s on order now are only to replace older 747 400 models, not for fleeet capacity increase. In fact more 744s maybe retired than new models ordered to replace them.
Always seemed strange to me how BA operating from worlds most congested airport ordered smaller capacity long haul jets, and not A380. They could for instance operate 2 A380 flts from LHR to HK daily instead of 3 744 flts. They could also cut down on no. of NY flts with A 380s, etc without losing seats, infact increasing seats.
Euro Airlines operate such a varied long haul fleet from A330 200s a thru to A380(soon)! And everything in between. This is good cos airlines can swap planes onto different routes depending on seasonal loads and during boom/bust periods in certain areas. All BA can do is add/remove flights, not easy at LHR. BA dumped many Asian routes during 97 markets crash, but never reintroduced flights cos the Asian carriers snatched the slots. Now thats crap business planning really. The US market is strong, but with China and India emerging and South east Asia once again on the rise, BA doesn't seem to offer many flights to take advantage of the new custom on offer. I don't understand how it can keep nearly 60 jumbo jets when so many long haul routes have been dropped.
Plus, look at Virgins massive and constant rise, they have been eagerly soaking up unwanted BA capacity and theyve expanded their fleet 200% in less than 10 yrs. They have many A340-600s on order, as well as up to 12 mighty A 380s. Of course, as a customer you and I are laughing as we have so much more choice flying from UK to worldwide than any French or German, as we can fly considerably easily from UK to anywhere directly or one stopping at an easy transfer hub.
You could say therefore we have a much better aviation industry outlook than out euro neighbours. Another ironic fact is that cos Heathrow public transport links are so shit (compared with Paris TGV/Frankfurt ICE) most people find it easier just to fly instead!

Are Virgin getting T2 ?Virgin will stay in T3.

Yes Virgin will eventually have their own 'hub' space in Heathrow East.

BA/QF take T5, and other oneworld carriers take up T3 (a real shit terminal).

Star take up Heathrow East, as well as most other carriers.

Skyteam and a few other stragglers are set for T4 I think (weird tho as no UK airline is in Skyteam) tho AF/KLM will use it as a hub I guess.

VS will move out of T3 when Heathrow East is opened I thought?

JAL in finacial difficulties, so oneworlds airlines are all more profitable eh?! ;)JAL hasn't formally joined Oneworld yet. By the time it does then it probably will be back in the profits. ;)

But seriously Oneworld is more profitable.... I think American is the only US major to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy altogether. British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas all have sky high stock market valuations because they are all extremely profitable and highly rated by industry analysts. One thing I didn't cover earlier.... you mentioned BA routes dropped in the Far East. It's true that BA dropped Osaka, Nagoya, and Seoul in 1998, Jakarta in 1999, and Taipei, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur in 2001. However that is precisely because it codeshares with Cathay via Oneworld. Melbourne was dropped for the same reason (replaced by a codeshare deal with Qantas for the Singapore-Melbourne leg). Alliances can lead to route cuts as well as drops in frequencies. Of course the real problem is slot availability at Heathrow. BA will drop thinner routes to add an extra frequncy on traditonal money mill routes like New York or Los Angeles. BA remains by far the largest trans-Atlantic carrier. Many of the routes BA has dropped were a legacy of BA's flag-flying days. They were never particularly profitable.Also oneworld has lost out before to Star, namely Canadian being taken over by Air Canada. And Swiss were due to join oneworld but then dfected to Star at the last minute. It looks like oneworld may also be the only alliance with trouble entering China, cos of the difficulties you pointed out.I don't think there will be a difficulty for Oneworld in China. This Cathay/Dragonair deal looks imminent. If that goes through then Oneworld will have the best hub and carrier in China. If it doesn't, or if it does but Dragonair remains outside Oneworld, then it's only a matter of time before we get China Eastern. Cathay will be able to fly to Shanghai later this year in any case so that particular bone of contention will disappear. Star's biggest recent coup was signing up Jet Airways - easily the largest and most competitive of India's new airlines. Air India had a fallout with Skyteam and my hope is that Air India will now join Oneworld. Even if it doesn't then Oneworld can sign any of India's smaller budget carriers SpiceJet, IndiGo, Air Deccan, or Kingfisher and seal good access to the smaller Indian cities whilst monopolising the London-India routes. Indeed that may be preferable to signing up an old dinosaur like Air India.

OK so BA is taking advantage of its oneworld partners, I guess thats why theres like 7 flts a day between LHR and HKG on oneworld planes, but this is more of a reason for BA to buy A380s cos they can be filled, leading to more slots being opened up to connect with local areas, mind you its strange how some alliance routes have grown, yet others will drop.
Yes, I heard Star were including Jet, quite a boon for bmi who want to expand to India from LHR. Tho as you point out there are many rapidly expanding airlines there for oneworld to partner.
It'll be interesting to see if Emirates joins an alliance as well, as its basically dumping capacity into the UK, far more than in Europe. Again, boosting UK business thru connections with Asia.
You have to admit tho Monkey, Heathrow growth constraints are not losing UK business to Europe eh, that is pap like!

^ 8 flights per day on Oneworld from London to Hong Kong (4 x Cathay Pacific, 3 x British Airways, and 1 x Qantas). Capacity from London to Hong Kong has exploded in the last year. By November Hong Kong will equal Chicago as Heathrow's third busiest longhaul route after New York and Dubai with 77 flights per week. I did a thread on this before:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=335528


Capacity will have virtually doubled to Hong Kong in the last 12 months by the time Air New Zealand's newly announced Hong Kong service commences from October 28th. British Airways recently went from two daily to three daily and Cathay Pacific upped its offer from three to four. Qantas recently upped its frequency to daily and Virgin Atlantic adds the ninth daily service. Air New Zealand will add a tenth daily service from late October and longhaul start-up Oasis Airlines will add services to Gatwick from late summer which will create eleven daily London-Hong Kong services on the days that they fly (daily?). Almost all of these services use the largest aircraft flying (Boeing 747-400s, 777s, or A340-600s).

- Cathay Pacific = 28
- British Airways = 21
- Virgin Atlantic = 7
- Qantas Airways = 7
- Air New Zealand = 7
- Oasis Airlines = 7 (?)

You have to admit tho Monkey, Heathrow growth constraints are not losing UK business to Europe eh, that is pap like!Not yet... simply because Heathrow is still ahead. However it will really start to bite in the coming years unless action is taken now. Not building a new runway at Heathrow until 2020 would be a disaster for the British aviation industry and for London's competitiveness against European rivals in terms of global connectivity. We cannot afford to be complacent and take our position for granted.

But we are connected globally anyway, cos we can go thru europe, or Dubai, or anywhere, and more to the point, from anywhere in UK, not just Heathrow.
Its not about complacency its about the fact that Heathrow can't be expanded anymore. Where is this idea that a country or city will suffer its competitivness because it has more than 1 international airport not a flag carrier superhub?

NY has done fine, as has Tokyo, the other alpha financial centres.

^ But New York and Tokyo are not so international as London. Their business is largely domestic. London also has a huge lead in aviation traffic over either of them. London will benefit more than either of the other two from globalisation because it has better geography and stronger links to emerging markets. Heathrow is a vital plank of that. Why on earth would businessmen want to transfer through European cities like Paris or places like Dubai? They might as well locate in Paris or Dubai in the first place. And that's the worry.... that rivals like Paris and, in the not-too distant future, Dubai, with its tax free cost advantages, will be able to gradually steal a greater share of the investment that has, until now, preferred London. London has the opportunity to be the most important city on earth. It is the premier world city in Europe and is situated between Europe and America with excellent links into the emerging markets of Asia. Global connectivity is a critically important London advantage - and Heathrow's new runway is therefore vital infrastructure for London's economy. We wouldn't stand back and say "well it's OK if Paris becomes Europe's number one financial hub - we can always do business through them" do we? So why do you want to do the same with aviation? It's one of the only world-beating industries we still have. Britain's 20th century history is littered with once world beating industries that failed to invest and innovate to keep ahead of the game. Let's not have aviation go the same way simply because the government is too timid to stand up to HACAN and build a runway inbetween two motorways on land that is already highly blighted.

They could build a new London Airport near Calais or Dunkerque. Nice and flat, speedy Eurostar to St Pancras. Do wonders for the tunnel. Surprised the French haven't thought of that.

But thousands of businessmen transfer via european hubs bound for London daily. Its just a fact of life. When do you suggest the Heathrow growth fad stop, a 12 runway 50 terminal airport the size of Ireland just so every plane in the world can stop there? Come on, businesses won't relocate just cos they have deals with say Air France. The company I used to work for always flew us Air France via CDG cos they had a deal going, they didn't up and go to Paris. People and more so businesses are more and more taking advantage of increased competition from airlines worldwide and transfering is more common now. Yes Heathrow is very valuable in terms of jobs and the money it generates. But why will London lose out when it has 2 other massive airports which when combined beat the shit out of any european city by miles. They are connected to London by decent rail and road links as well.
I'm sure in the end Heathrow will get its third runway, be it a piddly 1800m one only useful for small planes and apparently only usable for like 6 hrs a day, as well as another terminal, but it doesn't make it a better airport. For instance, DIRECT public transport links from Heathrow to the rest of the UK are basically non-existant, a few national express buses?
Just for sake we said that each London airport acted as a hub for the respective airline alliances, how would you argue your point then, as each set of airlines could have an easy transfer system in place then. Wouldn't be abad opinion IMO.

But we are connected globally anyway, cos we can go thru europe, or Dubai, or anywhere, and more to the point, from anywhere in UK, not just Heathrow.
Its not about complacency its about the fact that Heathrow can't be expanded anymore. Where is this idea that a country or city will suffer its competitivness because it has more than 1 international airport not a flag carrier superhub?

NY has done fine, as has Tokyo, the other alpha financial centres.

As my man Monkey had said, London depends much more on its connectivity with the rest of the world.

New York and Tokyo are located in by far & away the two largest economies in the world currently, and so dosen't have as great a need for a large hub as London.

Just look at the site UK Invest: http://www.ukinvest.gov.uk/2/d/10123/en/GB/1.0.html . When talking about international investments in London, it starts by commenting on: Heathrow Airport.

London's business in this respect is because its such a well connected city.

Citibank, General Mills, Wall Street, OpTier, Lehmann Brothers, Reuters, Nortel, Morgan Stanley, Infosys, CNN, Honda, AOL, McDonalds, General Electric, Deutsche Bank, Avantec, CNBC, Nomura, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, PSB, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group, Samsung Electronics, Visual Networks Inc, Salomon Brothers (plus many many more big names) have their European Headquarters in and around London

Why? Not because London is a pretty city, and not because its a big city. Its because its an extremely well connected city, and this should not be taken for granted.

What makes it well connected? Well having access to most cities around the world, is a major factor.

And plus, for us Londoners, the more routes in and out of London, the more competition, meaning much lower air fares.

(eg its much cheaper to fly KLM Amsterdam - London and British Airways London - Nairobi ... than it is to fly KLM Amsterdam - Nairobi)


(21st May 06)
Apple's European headquarters has long been in France, though its London operations have lately overtaken those in Paris.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/lobbyside.php

Yes, but the point is there are 2 other airports able to expand and enhance Londons 'connectivity' as you say. If this wern't the case, why not flog Gatwick and Stansted, demolish 50 sq miles around H'row and build a rather large airport?

Besides, what happens 20yrs down the line if say H'row gets its new runway and terminal and reaches capacity again, do we start to demolish Slough? where does the cycle end? Reading? Swindon? South Wales!

BAA is being sold to the Spanish tommorow for 10 billion, hears hoping for a breakup of the London (and Scottish) monopolies.

BAA is being sold to the Spanish tommorow for 10 billion, hears hoping for a breakup of the London (and Scottish) monopolies.But if BAA is sold outright to Ferrovial then there won't be a breakup of the monopoly. The monopoly will simply have a new owner. It only gets broken up if the British authorities insist on it as part of the deal. I don't know if the BAA sale is a good thing or a bad thing. There has to be a concern at the level of debt they take on to make the aquisitions. Will they be able to afford the investments needed? However if the CAA or competition regulators force a breakup then the resulting competition will likely be beneficial. It may just get things speeded along.

The monopoly is what makes it an attractive purchase.

So Mr Monkey, a great slice of the 'British world leading aviation industry' is now in foreign hands, whether Heathrow expanded or not! Explain that one! :)

So Mr Monkey, a great slice of the 'British world leading aviation industry' is now in foreign hands, whether Heathrow expanded or not! Explain that one! :)That it's foreign owned doesn't matter in the slightest. I read an article on these forums recently that 45% of the City's financial sector was foreign owned. That's a sign of London's attractiveness to foreign investors. Ferrovial is paying top dollar for BAA (it's not as if they are stealing it....) and, by it's very nature, it's obvious that the airports are serving a local market (London/SE) and must by necessity remain in London. It's not like a factory where a foreign buyer can close it down, ditch the local workforce, take the valuable machines and equipment, and then ship it back to a factory back home in Spain. By it's very nature airports serve a local area. Ferrovial is buying into UK aviation and the London/SE market. They are welcome. The value of Heathrow (also Gatwick and Stansted) is to London's economy - in providing the global connectivity I was referring to earlier. So long as Ferrovial continue their investment in London airports then I think it's a good thing. If the UK government uses this opportunity to force a break-up of the group then we could end up with competing airports which will probably lead to new runways being built faster rather than slower. My only concern about Ferrovial is whether they have taken on too much debt to finance the purchase. If that is the case then it could affect the level of future investment they are able to make.

Foreign managed doesn't mean foreign owned. Many of the shareholders will be British financial institutions who in turn will have foreign financial institutions as shareholders who in turn will have British investors and so on and so on.

Aye, I'll agree with you on that one, the BAA should be broken up, so that Gatwick and Stansted get more of the money they genrate put back into improving themselves. Stansted could easily grow to Heathrow capacity and beyond in just a few years, it has rail connections to London and the North and has the underused M11, a six lane motorway that runs right into East London and the Docklands, much faster route than the M4 by far. Ok Gatwick has a good rail link to London, but its road connection into the centre is crap, the M23 stops 12 miles short of where it was intended! I'd say Gatwick will be overtaken by Stansted in importance by the end of this decade. Especially considering the Olympics and the advantages Stansted holds over the other 2 airports in proximity to the site (if the money is invested in the place now - which it probably won't be).

^ It always makes me laugh at how much importance people attach to the Olympics. They are a two-week-long sporting festival for chrissakes!! If The Athens Olympics are anything to go by we may actually get less visitors during the Olympics than in other years.

If BAA is broken up by UK regulators then Ferrovial will probably be forced to sell one of the airports (probably Gatwick as expansion is not possible owing to legal constraints). This will be good for competition and will also clear the debts they incurred buying BAA in the first place - which in turn clears the way for investments in new runways and terminals. It also places the major airlines in a stronger position. BA, Virgin, and EasyJet all use Gatwick and at least one other BAA airport (EasyJet uses Stansted and BA and Virgin use Heathrow). That will increase their lobbying power greatly. :)

Foreign managed doesn't mean foreign owned. Many of the shareholders will be British financial institutions who in turn will have foreign financial institutions as shareholders who in turn will have British investors and so on and so on.

According to today's papers only about 20% is owned by British Pension Funds with almost as much owned by short term hedge funds.

Jeremy Warner asks an interesting question in that if overseas Funds (the Goldman Sachs bid was also largely funded by foreign institutions) value the BAA
for it's revenue streams and assets, why don't British Institutions.

It is more likely that Ferrovial will sell off BAA's foreign assets. Monkey is correct in that the airports will remain key economic drivers particularly LHR.

Air China may yet join oneworld
Agreement with rival Star Alliance likely to be scrapped in share swap changes
6 June 2006
South China Morning Post

The oneworld alliance, whose membership now looks likely to include Air China, generated sales of more than US$1.8 billion from interlining agreements last year as members took greater advantage of feeding passengers into each other's route networks.

Air China last month signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the rival Star Alliance. But with trading suspended yesterday pending an announcement of a share swap with Cathay Pacific Airways, the provisional deal is now likely to be rescinded in favour of a oneworld membership.

Senior oneworld executives did not rule out such a move yesterday in Paris.

"We feel under no pressure in terms of time to sign a mainland carrier. It is as much finding a match for us as it is finding a carrier in the region," John McCulloch, a managing partner in oneworld said before trading was suspended yesterday. "You will see a lot more happen yet before it is all settled. I would be surprised if the [Air China] MOU was rescinded in any way. But stranger things have happened."

The alliance said it would like to see its interlining revenue, which rose 10.7 per cent year on year, grow 20 to 30 per cent a year until the end of the decade.

Revenue from alliance "fairs and sales activities" rose 20 per cent to US$650 million, the alliance said.

Members reckoned they had saved an aggregate US$250 million through co-operative actions such as joint fuel purchasing, sharing airport facilities and engineering and maintenance work.

"To be frank, we have found [co-operating on cost reduction] much more difficult than in the area of finding revenue," Mr McCulloch said. "Nevertheless, it was still a landmark for oneworld. We are making big head roads in engineering and maintenance."

Members spend US$5 billion a year in engineering maintenance, excluding manpower.

It was the only alliance to turn a profit last year, with its members posting aggregate earnings of US$1.8 billion. American Airlines was its only member to finish in the red, posting a loss of US$861 million.

But that may all change next year with Malev and Japan Airlines also joining the alliance; the pair combined to lose US$427 million last year.

Royal Jordanian will also join oneworld, the only alliance without a mainland partner. But that is expected to change after all five of Dragonair's shareholders suspended trading of their shares yesterday.

The profitability of oneworld's members has given room for a relaxed approach towards securing a mainland partner, despite the obvious potential of the market.

"[Finding a China partner] is important but it is not going to be life-threatening for Qantas or any other of the airlines. I don't regard it as an urgent issue at all," Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said yesterday. "I'm very relaxed about where the Chinese carriers go. The big game in China is going to be years off yet."

With Shanghai Airlines and Air China both throwing their lot in with Star last month - and China Southern to join the Skyteam alliance this month - the market had aligned oneworld with China Eastern, the country's last unattached major carrier.

But members insisted before trading was suspended yesterday that they were still talking with multiple potential mainland partners.

"It is not a case of membership for membership sake," British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh said. "That is the difference between what oneworld has done and what some of the other airlines have done. For an alliance to have any credibility, the individual members have to be performing well."This is an interesting article for you DangerVolts. This could be an interesting week of news for Chinese aviation. I hope that both Air China and Dragonair end up in Oneworld along with Cathay. Note that Oneworld is the only alliance to have turned a profit. :)

Yes Monkey, this is a surprising one. It wou;dn't really matter which mainland Chinese airline(s) did join oneworld as they all turn very good profits and have ambitios route and fleet expansion plans and so will all offer a positive addition to the alliances. However up to 3 chinese regional carriers in the same alliance Air China, China Eastern and Dragonair), almost seems like over kill! Am I wrong in thinking Cathay/Swire has intersts in the said airlines?

^ There is no way that China Eastern will join as well as Air China. It will be either one or the other. It seems clear that Oneworld will at least get Dragonair as it's taken over by Cathay in the coming days. It gives Cathay the mainland access that it has long craved. If Air China really does ditch Star in favour of Oneworld then I would expect China Eastern to join Star. BTW only the Hong Kong carriers (Cathay Pacific and Dragonair) and Air China are profitable. China Eastern and China Southern are both serious loss makers despite their fast growth.

Swire is the largest shareholder in Cathay with a ~45% stake and Cathay and Air China both hold stock in each other. The ownership structure will be juggled up by this new deal.

I wonder why they would've gone that far (an MOU) if they knew about the share swap.

^ 8 flights per day on Oneworld from London to Hong Kong (4 x Cathay Pacific, 3 x British Airways, and 1 x Qantas). Capacity from London to Hong Kong has exploded in the last year. By November Hong Kong will equal Chicago as Heathrow's third busiest longhaul route after New York and Dubai with 77 flights per week. I did a thread on this before:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=335528


Capacity will have virtually doubled to Hong Kong in the last 12 months by the time Air New Zealand's newly announced Hong Kong service commences from October 28th. British Airways recently went from two daily to three daily and Cathay Pacific upped its offer from three to four. Qantas recently upped its frequency to daily and Virgin Atlantic adds the ninth daily service. Air New Zealand will add a tenth daily service from late October and longhaul start-up Oasis Airlines will add services to Gatwick from late summer which will create eleven daily London-Hong Kong services on the days that they fly (daily?). Almost all of these services use the largest aircraft flying (Boeing 747-400s, 777s, or A340-600s).

- Cathay Pacific = 28
- British Airways = 21
- Virgin Atlantic = 7
- Qantas Airways = 7
- Air New Zealand = 7
- Oasis Airlines = 7 (?)There is a guy on Airliners.net claiming inside knowledge that Virgin Atlantic will start a second daily Hong Kong service from London as of November (or to be precise it will be thrice weekly from November and go daily from February 2007). That would give London 12 daily departues to Hong Kong and 84 per week. Hong Kong would then match Dubai and be second only to New York as London's busiest long haul:
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/2812899/

I wonder why they would've gone that far (an MOU) if they knew about the share swap.Some interesting news for you Samsonyuen:


Canada and UK reach open-skies agreement
http://www.airfinancejournal.com/default.asp?page=7&PubID=44&ISS=21933&SID=632111

The UK and Canada have settled on an open-skies agreement that will remove restrictions on passenger and cargo service by Canadian carriers to and from third countries via the UK, and also allow UK carriers to operate to and from third countries via Canada.

It will also remove restrictions on the pricing for these flights. Some restrictions between the two countries will remain, however, such as the cabotage prohibition on Canadian and UK carriers offering service between points within the UK and Canada, respectively. The agreement, which is expected to come into force in September, will replace the one dating back to 1988.

OK so Cathay have scored the deal. They now own 100% of Dragonair. Surely Dragonair at least will join Oneworld!! Air China and Cathay Pacific have also boosted their stakes in each other. News stories from Bloomberg and Reuters:


Cathay to Buy Control of Dragonair for $1.58 Billion
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=atxNVbvRba4g&refer=home

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., Asia's fifth-biggest carrier, will pay $1.58 billion to buy Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd. and double its stake in Air China Ltd., adding 21 routes in the world's second-largest aviation market.

Cathay will buy the 82 percent stake it doesn't own in Dragonair for HK$8.22 billion ($1.1 billion) in cash and stock and pay HK$4.07 billion to increase its Air China stake to 20 percent, the airlines said in a statement today. Air China will pay HK$5.39 billion for 10.2 percent of Hong Kong-based Cathay.

Dragonair's routes in China will give Cathay access to cities including Shanghai and Tianjin, making it the dominant foreign-controlled airline in China. A stake in Cathay, Asia's second-most-profitable carrier, may help Air China compete with domestic rivals including China Southern Airlines Co.

``Having control of Dragonair will be positive for Cathay,'' Mona Chung, who holds Asian airline stocks in the $1 billion she helps manage at Daiwa Asset Management Ltd. in Hong Kong, said before the deal was announced. ``Dragonair now dominates'' flights from Hong Kong to China, she said.

Air China, the nation's largest international airline, will also set up a cargo venture with Cathay in Shanghai to increase cooperation, the companies said.

Cathay, which resumed flights to China in 2003 after a 13- year absence, has routes to only Beijing and the southeastern city of Xiamen. It also flies cargo to Shanghai.


Shanghai Jewel

Dragonair and China Eastern Airlines Corp. are the only carriers that fly passengers between Hong Kong and Shanghai, China's commercial center. The city is Hong Kong's busiest air route after Taipei.

Air China, based in Beijing, is facing more competition as China Southern sets up a hub in the Chinese capital. British Airways Plc is among international carriers that are adding flights to China as the country opens up its aviation market.

Global airlines are seeking to expand in China, where the World Tourism Organization forecasts 100 million people will travel abroad each year by 2020, up from about 20.2 million in 2003.


Shareholding Structure

Air China currently holds 69 percent of China National Aviation Co., which is Dragonair's biggest shareholder with a 43 percent stake. Cathay will give China National Aviation shares and cash for the stake, giving the Chinese company a 7.3 percent stake in Cathay.

Cathay will issue new stock to Swire Pacific Ltd., its biggest shareholder, for its 7.7 percent stake in Dragonair.

Citic Pacific Ltd. will sell its entire 28.5 percent stake in Dragonair to Cathay. Air China will then buy Cathay shares from Swire and Citic, the statement said.

Swire will remain the largest shareholder of Cathay with a 40 percent stake, followed by Hong Kong-based Citic Pacific with 17.5 percent.

ABN Amro Holding NV advised Cathay on the transaction and Merrill Lynch & Co. worked with Air China.

Trading in shares of Cathay, Air China, China National Aviation, Swire Pacific and Citic Pacific was suspended on June 5 after the Standard newspaper reported Cathay might pay at least HK$10 billion to acquire Dragonair.


Cathay seals US$1.05 billion buyout of Dragonair
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nHKG286612&imageid=&cap=

HONG KONG, June 9 (Reuters) - Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. said on Friday it will pay HK$8.22 billion ($1.05 billion) in cash and shares to take over rival Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd. in a long-expected deal that expands its access to the fast-growing mainland China aviation market.

As part of the deal, Cathay will also pay HK$4.07 billion to double its stake in Beijing-controlled Air China Ltd. (0753.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) from 10 percent to 20 percent.

In turn, Air China will pay HK$5.39 billion for a 10.16 percent stake in Cathay, the companies said.

Air China controls China National Aviation Co. Ltd. (CNAC) (1110.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), which is the largest shareholder in unlisted Dragonair. Cathay already held a 17.8 percent stake in Dragonair.

Some interesting news for you Samsonyuen:


Canada and UK reach open-skies agreement
http://www.airfinancejournal.com/default.asp?page=7&PubID=44&ISS=21933&SID=632111

The UK and Canada have settled on an open-skies agreement that will remove restrictions on passenger and cargo service by Canadian carriers to and from third countries via the UK, and also allow UK carriers to operate to and from third countries via Canada.

It will also remove restrictions on the pricing for these flights. Some restrictions between the two countries will remain, however, such as the cabotage prohibition on Canadian and UK carriers offering service between points within the UK and Canada, respectively. The agreement, which is expected to come into force in September, will replace the one dating back to 1988.

Great news! Even lower prices to Canada.

To frankly answer the question, yes I think that Heathrow has to be phased out, the sooner the better if London does not want to fall behind and lose its intercontinental hub. Main consultants predict that only 3 or 4 main hubs will remain in Europe in a few decades, if years. Heathrow, located on a 1000 acres surface and constrained by only two runways is completely saturated and has no capacity to expand, or to cope with the projected growth of traffic (estimated at 5% per annum) until 2010, at least. Heathrow just cannot compete with Paris CDG, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Madrid, and tomorrow Moscow or Stockholm. Heathrow may still be #1 in Europe in the number of passengers arrivals, but in terms of traffic movements, number of destinations and connections or freight, Heathrow is already lagging behind, third or fourth in the list. Paris CDG already offers 10 % more flights, 35 more destinations, 4 times more short connections than Heathrow. It is expected that CDG overtakes Heathrow in terms of passengers in 2010 (Paris is actually at 55 million passengers, Heathrow 67). Without its high speed train network which carries 90 Million people a year, CDG would already be far ahead. Then it will be Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Madrid's turn to overtake Heathrow. The A380 arrival won't change a thing.
Heathrow will never be allowed to expand its capacity by building a third runway. Allowing such a construction in an overurbanised area, defying any safety preoccupations, exceeding and ignoring national and European noise and pollution regulations, could prove to be a very hazardous political decision and neither Tony nor anyone else will ever have the guts to face the multiple anti-runway organisations and elected councils who are already at war - even Livingstone is against it, let alone it would now be considered just for the sole benefit of a Spanish company! Even if done, the extension would prove extremely costly (long and painful legal procedures, expropriation, decontamination, river and pond diverting, M4 tunnelling, new terminal, new runway, transport system extension), inefficient (short runway, another small remote terminal), still uncompetitive (compare the 3 runways and 1000 acres of Heathrow to the 3000 acres of CDG or the 5 runways at Amsterdam Schipol) and would in the end be of no use for economic development as there is no extra room anyway in the Thames corridor for expanding businesses, logistic or warehouse developments. It is not only Heathrow which is congested, it is also the Orbital, the tube, the streets, the roads, the Thames Valley, not to say the whole south east of England. Poor national planning and mediocre transportation links led to an over concentration in an already overpopulated area and may lead to general paralysis if it is not stopped immediately and reverted.
It was sheer folly to build this T5 terminal at Heathrow for a staggering £4.2 B. Without a third runway this new terminal, theoretically capable of handling 30 million extra passengers, will never meet its original goal, i.e. increase the total number of passengers at Heathrow, and will prove completely useless! £4.2 B for a useless thing, the Dome fiasco record is broken! If it was only meant to improve passengers treatment, it would have been much wiser to just refurbish the original terminals for a fraction of the pharaonic cost of widening a motorway, adding spur roads, extending 2 rail lines, diverting rivers and building a huge new infrastructure. In France, with £4 billion, you can build 500 km of high speed lines and 6 suburban TGV stations !
As the Town and Council Association recently announced, Heathrow is a series of bad decisions that led to an unprecedented catastrophe.
London and the UK need to firmly focus on an other airport now! A clear decision has to be made and all means must be implemented in order to achieve that goal. Building a new airport in the Thames estuary is not a good solution. It needs to be accessible by the largest part of the South East population and linked to business and logistics centers. Therefore it should be located in the west or north of London, accessible from the City and the Docklands, the Thames Valley and other decisional centers like Birmingham.
Building a new maglev line would also be pure madness. Even the nations who invented it didn't yet dare to build a full scale specimen. Unknown costs of an unproven technology, the non compatibility of the maglev with the existing rail network (meaning no possible access to city centers and the building of new surburban stations and their rail and road links), combined with negligible advantages (the 350km/h of a TGV and 500km/h of a maglev do not make a significant difference in total travel time in most travel configurations, especially when you have to leave the maglev to take a conventional train to the city center) make of the maglev a splendid utopian vision (remember the first maglev were invented in the 50's) to build in a virgin environment but a extremely expensive gadget to integrate into the existing network of our old nations.
The maglev is just an handkerchief deployed by Tony before his departure to mask the potent failure of his transport plan (national electronic road toll system, rail and road improvements, air development) and his lies on environmental issues. It took Britain 20 years to build a tiny 50 miles high speed line to the tunnel, how long do you think it would take to build a London Glasgow maglev line? Stop dreaming!
So will Heathrow be able to stop the slide? It will prove very difficult. The problem is that British airports are now in foreign hands, which complicates the picture and will even more remote the chance to see a third runway built. In addition, British Airways, which literally feeds the Heathrow hub and used to hold 25% of the European market in the 80's and 90's, now only owns 16%, far behind Air France-KLM (27%) and Lufthansa-Swiss (20%). Its airline alliance, Oneworld, is the smallest of the three main global alliances Star and Skyteam. Attacked by Ryan Air on the short haul traffic, by Air France and Iberia on the long haul traffic, it has failed to expand its market share and consolidate with another partner, rebuffed by Iberia and KLM, and passively let KLM and Swiss be absorbed by Air France and Lufthansa. BA is poised to lose another good share of traffic in the following years, and may even suffer more. From a predator it has become a prey. Knowing that BA is Heathrow's most precious asset, this may also prove even more problematic for the future of Heathrow.
So yes, London - and the UK - may lose its intercontinental hub. Will it hurt its economy and its alpha city status? Difficult to answer. It will obviously discredit its airspace industry, maybe the last remaining transportation industry in the UK. But having actually planes queuing up on the tarmac or in the air waiting to take off or land, meaning poor connections and multiple delays, as receiving passengers in third world looking facilities which are congested and badly linked, is already a devastating mirror of the rampant discrepancy of the air industry in the UK. The sooner Heathrow is phased out, the better for the future of aviation in the UK.
Foreign direct investment is already taming in England as new actors other than American or Japanese invest in Europe and prefer a Euro denominated country with modern transportation links and lower prices. London only manages to maintain its alpha city status thanks to the English language and its former global dominance. But as the world is getting globalised, these advantages are not sufficient anymore, and London needs to fairly improve its transportation network, and that applies to rail, road and air, if it does not want to fall behind, not only in the air industry but in the whole economy.

^ There is so much bullshit in that post/article that I barely know where to begin! Paris CDG does not handle 55 million pax pa yet. Heathrow handles 68 million pa, which is only half of London's massively dominant total (135 million pa), and the construction of Terminal 5 will obviously enable Heathrow to handle far more. An extra runway would keep Heathrow competitive for two decades or more. Ferrovial have announced their intention to accelerate delivery of the 3rd runway at Heathrow. They are a construction company after all. That is why BA supported their bid for BAA. Air France-KLM and Lufthansa-Swiss are larger than BA because they consist of two separate airlines with two/three separate hubs in separate countries with separate brands. They are just two separate airlines stitched together by a corporate merger at the top. BA alone makes more operating profit than either of the stitched together entities - despite the fact that BA faces far greater competition. It is not to Paris's credit that its' aviation market is completely dominated by Air France and the competition deliberately squeezed out by government favouritism. London, with formidable and highly profitable domestic competitiors like Virgin Atlantic, Ryanair, EasyJet, and BMI, offers far more competition and choice, and London's aviation traffic has consequently enjoyed far higher growth in terms of route development and passenger traffic, and generated far higher profits. The assertion that Paris CDG would already be ahead if it wasn't for the TGV carrying 90 million pax pa is utter bullshit. It's hardly as if this TGV traffic is all feeding into Charles de Gaulle airport!! And even with the TGV it takes longer to travel between the major French cities by rail (eg Paris, Lyon, Marseilles) than it does between Britain's (eg London, Birmingham, and Manchester). Britain's West Coast Main Line is the busiest trunk route in Europe! Also Oneworld is the only profitable airline alliance and is obviously far stronger than patched-together Skyteam with its' huge gaps and overlaps. Forthcoming Oneworld members such as JAL (largest carrier in Asia) and likely Dragonair (recently aquired by Cathay Pacific - this combination will make an absolute giant!!) will see Oneworld move ahead of Skyteam in terms of pax numbers as well as everything else. And FDI is not fading in Britain! In fact Britain's FDI overtook China in 2005 and was second in the world only to the US.

Regardless of the minutae of the posts, Frankfurt and Paris and Amsterdam/Madrid will probably overtake Heathrow in passenger throughput within 10 years.

The 3rd runway will take upwards of what 20 years to clear planning, relocation of business and homes and construction.

Heathrow's growth is very low compared with the other 4 main continental airports and lumping in the other London airports has no bearing on London's status. It it of little use to a passenger that he arrives from Bratislava at Stansted and changes airports to fly Heathrow-Hong Kong. This business will leave Heathrow for the easier accessed, cleaner, more spacious airports in Europe.

Either the UK government and BAA sort out transferring all business to Stansted or Heathrow will loose most of its interlining growth.

The overall London market will be the biggest, but the connecting stuff will start to migrate to the better designed and located airports. Already Heathrow is loosing its status as the primary link for connecting flights from a number of UK airports, with other airlines cashing in on their available slots feeding into their networks.

Well done UK plc for a stunning lack of forsight, at any stage it would be more prudent to start with a new airport or transfer the lot to Stansted. If London is the world's biggest airport market by a fair margin why can't it have the world's biggest airport?

Paris built a new airport years ago
Denver
Dallas
Hong Kong
Munich etc...

c'mon bite the bullet and make a decision, upgrading all the London airports is a cop out short term waste of space and time.

Me thinks Legrandarc is somebody in disguise as its a remarkable Controversial first post. Full of so much bullshit & blantant attempt to start another nationalist arguement.

Might be worth a mod locking the thread as the original article for the thread was long ago & the article debated in full ages ago.

Regardless of the minutae of the posts, Frankfurt and Paris and Amsterdam/Madrid will probably overtake Heathrow in passenger throughput within 10 years.

The 3rd runway will take upwards of what 20 years to clear planning, relocation of business and homes and construction.

Heathrow's growth is very low compared with the other 4 main continental airports and lumping in the other London airports has no bearing on London's status. It it of little use to a passenger that he arrives from Bratislava at Stansted and changes airports to fly Heathrow-Hong Kong. This business will leave Heathrow for the easier accessed, cleaner, more spacious airports in Europe.

Either the UK government and BAA sort out transferring all business to Stansted or Heathrow will loose most of its interlining growth.

The overall London market will be the biggest, but the connecting stuff will start to migrate to the better designed and located airports. Already Heathrow is loosing its status as the primary link for connecting flights from a number of UK airports, with other airlines cashing in on their available slots feeding into their networks.

Well done UK plc for a stunning lack of forsight, at any stage it would be more prudent to start with a new airport or transfer the lot to Stansted. If London is the world's biggest airport market by a fair margin why can't it have the world's biggest airport?

Paris built a new airport years ago
Denver
Dallas
Hong Kong
Munich etc...

c'mon bite the bullet and make a decision, upgrading all the London airports is a cop out short term waste of space and time.I disagree with all of this. Of course London's other airports "have a bearing on London's status"! They handle as much traffic as Heathrow for chrissakes!! London and Gatwick (BA and Virgin's main bases) have a combined traffic total almost double that of Paris CDG, and London's 3rd airport, Stansted, will likely overtake Paris's 2nd, Orly, in the next couple of years. That's not even to mention fast growing Luton and City!! To remain competitive all London needs to do is expand Heathrow with an extra runway (and also start on a new one at Stansted....) and we get all the growth and connections potential that we need. There is new legislation limiting the length of planning enquiries so there will be no repeat of the decade-long planning decision for Terminal 5. London will then continue to have Europe's biggest airport as well as the world's biggest aviation market.

You mention Bratislava and Hong Kong. It's worth noting that London-Hong Kong traffic is greater than the traffic between all French and all Chinese cities combined. In the last two years London-Hong Kong has been the fastest growing long-haul route in the world. London also enjoys greater traffic to Bratislava than any of Paris, Amsterdam, or Madrid - though admittedly the traffic is divided between more than one airport.

And Heathrow is going to be the best designed airport in Europe in a few years time with the massive Richard Rogers Terminal 5 and the equally massive Norman Foster designed Heathrow East (replacing terminals 1 and 2). All London needs are the extra runways at Heathrow and Stansted. :yes:

And err... what "new" Paris aiport were you thinking of? Paris Charles de Gaulle was constructed in the 60s - it's almost as old as London Heathrow! :|

Me thinks Legrandarc is somebody in disguise as its a remarkable Controversial first post. Full of so much bullshit & blantant attempt to start another nationalist arguement.

Might be worth a mod locking the thread as the original article for the thread was long ago & the article debated in full ages ago.I think LeGrandArc is pretending to be French but isn't. The arch in La Défense is "La Grande Arche" (ie feminine). The Arc de Triomphe is masculine but is not known as "Grand".

Monkey, in terms of the UK Paris Charlie Boy is new, unless you wish to count Doncaster we have an appalling aviation investment record.

The fact remains that as individual airports the London airports are going to be surpassed by no less than 4 continental airports in the next 10 years MAX. That is a tragic waste and it WILL impact on the location of business HQ's in the next 25 years.

From a Mancunian perspective London & Paris are equally glamorous for our world HQ, but if you can easily plan your trip to one airport (Charlie Boy) rather than worry if you are to arrive at any of the 5 London options it may just sway your choice. Not discounting the fact that Charlie Boy is better designed, the odd building collapse excepted (Heathrow had its own landslip cockup though).

The point is that London deserves better than its current rank Heathrow (sod the current investment, the place is a dump and will be until T1-3 are redeveloped in 2010+), pokey Gatwick and Stansted.

I liken the current situation to the state of the old Wembley stadium, lets hope London can build a swanky airport to justify its status as the world's premier air hub.

Monkey, in terms of the UK Paris Charlie Boy is new, unless you wish to count Doncaster we have an appalling aviation investment record.

The fact remains that as individual airports the London airports are going to be surpassed by no less than 4 continental airports in the next 10 years MAX. That is a tragic waste and it WILL impact on the location of business HQ's in the next 25 years.

From a Mancunian perspective London & Paris are equally glamorous for our world HQ, but if you can easily plan your trip to one airport (Charlie Boy) rather than worry if you are to arrive at any of the 5 London options it may just sway your choice. Not discounting the fact that Charlie Boy is better designed, the odd building collapse excepted (Heathrow had its own landslip cockup though).

The point is that London deserves better than its current rank Heathrow (sod the current investment, the place is a dump and will be until T1-3 are redeveloped in 2010+), pokey Gatwick and Stansted.

I liken the current situation to the state of the old Wembley stadium, lets hope London can build a swanky airport to justify its status as the world's premier air hub.You forget that Paris Charles de Gaulle suffered a major setback when T2E collapsed - its currently being demolished and will have to be re-built. What is even more worrying is that practically all of the airport was done by the same architect...infact part of Dubai's airport collapsed and that shared the same architect - who knows what accidents will happen in the future there.

I also doubt that Heathrow would be surpassed in the next 10 years, if you were to assume that no growth happened at Heathrow and current growth rates remained, only Charles de Galle and Madrid Barajas would overtake Heathrow. Infact if it carried on as it does, Madrid Barajas would become the biggest airport in Europe - something highly doubtful considering that major growth there has been because of the new terminal relieving pressure. Expect the same with T5. You can count against Madrid becoming the business HQ of Europe any time soon! :laugh:

That however doesn't include the fact that Heathrow Terminal 5 is nearing completition and Heathrow East will begin soon.

And remember that Paris doesn't have one airport - it has two. And if airports were your primary concern for basing a world headquarters, then London is the best place - there are simply more destinations on offer. Charles de Gaulle also lacks a direct airport express service into Central Paris and I'd hardly call CDG world-class if that is what you're looking for.

Quite simply if London was to have one single airport it would be handelling some 135mppa.... quite simply such connections would be far too complex and especially for the future when the London hub could be handelling some 300mppa+

Why is locating one airport with a dozen parrallel runways more complex than:

Heathrow- 3 runways, road and rail links
Gatwick-2 runways, road and rail links
Stansted-2 runways road and rail links
Luton- 1 runway road and rail links

That is highly complex, repeating infrastructure and not a starting point for a sensible aviation policy.

It is no use to London (BAA) that someone in Liverpool flies to Amsterdam because the connecting London airport, Heathrow is full and always will be to such connecting services.

Potty!

Giving money & business away!

Madness!

No amount of arguements can explain how with Heathrow being the jewel for the UK, the rest of the UK finds it is restricted access! CRAZY!

Why is locating one airport with a dozen parrallel runways more complex than:

Heathrow- 3 runways, road and rail links
Gatwick-2 runways, road and rail links
Stansted-2 runways road and rail links
Luton- 1 runway road and rail links

That is highly complex, repeating infrastructure and not a starting point for a sensible aviation policy.

It is no use to London (BAA) that someone in Liverpool flies to Amsterdam because the connecting London airport, Heathrow is full and always will be to such connecting services.

Potty!

Giving money & business away!

Madness!

No amount of arguements can explain how with Heathrow being the jewel for the UK, the rest of the UK finds it is restricted access! CRAZY!That sounds like a far more feasible long-term policy than concentrating all air traffic at one airport.

It also means that accessibility to international air destinations is far more easier. If there is a major problem at CDG, Orly is the only airport around Paris that coud handle the backlog...if there was a problem at Heathrow, then Stansted, Gatwick and Luton could easily take the extra strain without extensive delays. No other city in the world can operate like this which makes London far more flexible for the demands of the future.

With the accessibility aspect - more people have greater access to the airports. If you live say in Cambridge, Stansted is your local base, if you live in Brighton, Gatwick, and so forth. You'd need ridiculous amounts of infrastructure just to support a 135mppa airport, let alone a massive 300mppa+ one. That would require so many railway lines that it would become a city unto itself.

But why fly from London when Liverpool or Manchester offer just as good services? Surely that is more about the UK air hub being far more prepared than other countries. If you want extensive air services in say Germany, Frankfurt is where you have to go, in France, its Paris, Spain - Madrid, etc... Britain has by far the most advanced air transport network in Europe and that is why its far larger.

I've yet to see any business say that London is poor because of its air connections - if anything its by far the superior city in all of the world for that aspect. And what money is going away?

I bet if London had one massive airport you'd still be complaining either way.

I'm not complaining about London, just the inept planning.

How can anyone defend Heathrow's position, it is a farce.

Which numpty allowed construction on all sides, hemming it in. At what point did the planners (council not BAA) realise, "oh yeah this is a big airport, growing steadily, lets not build here and leave it as part of the UK's strategic planned land". Idiots, the lot of them. Short sighted, corrupt numpties!

London is the premier air hub by accident not design.

London will not have the largest airport in Europe within 5 years?! An amazing achievement for an area handling 100 million ppa.

Much as I want airports to expand the ringing of London by noisy aircraft suits no one. It is not a dream scenario having only the Thames estuary with no planes chundering overhead.

All that space in the Thames for unrestricted, noise pollution free growth!

Oh well UK plc cocks up again. It may take 10/20/30 years but will London keep its stanglehold on premium traffic? It may do but why gamble when a vision can be created and started tomorrow!

Anyway, I only want to see properly planned growth and a strategic decision not to expand the ridiculously sited Heathrow.

You forget that Paris Charles de Gaulle suffered a major setback when T2E collapsed - its currently being demolished and will have to be re-built.

Nick, is that true? Are they demolishing that complete terminal??? My god, Wembley suddenly looks good again....

That however doesn't include the fact that Heathrow Terminal 5 is nearing completition and Heathrow East will begin soon.

Did I miss something? Have they made a decision on Heathrow East? I thought they still had to file for planning and with their new Spanish owners being being overloaded with debt I just wonder whether this is still a priority. I hope I am wrong.

Quite simply if London was to have one single airport it would be handelling some 135mppa.... quite simply such connections would be far too complex and especially for the future when the London hub could be handelling some 300mppa+

For those people that really want to connect from Ryannair to BA I think that will become much easier when Crossrail gets delivered. Just take the train to Farringdon and then take Thameslink, taking you to both Stansted and Gatwick.

That is a tragic waste and it WILL impact on the location of business HQ's in the next 25 years.

From a Mancunian perspective London & Paris are equally glamorous for our world HQ, but if you can easily plan your trip to one airport (Charlie Boy) rather than worry if you are to arrive at any of the 5 London options it may just sway your choice. Not discounting the fact that Charlie Boy is better designed, the odd building collapse excepted (Heathrow had its own landslip cockup though).

I agree the planners could have been a bit smarter; but taking the plane about once a week, I'd like to say that the fact of three airports catering for different audiences is not a bad thing.

Regarding corporate HQ, there are many other considerations. Anyway in terms of aviation to attract corporate HQ, the key challenge is not Heathrow but Notholt. Top executives fly increasingly private jet or "business exclusive" flights. London has a huge advantage in that respect with so many airfields around of which a few can be upgraded. Private jets are not that expensive anymore, you can get one state-of-the-art one for £800,000 right now. http://www.eclipseaviation.com/

I think the advantage of London with its multiple airports and airfields is that it can have a strategy targeting very different niche groups.

Monkey, in terms of the UK Paris Charlie Boy is new, unless you wish to count Doncaster we have an appalling aviation investment record.It's not new at all. It was built in the 1960s - as was most of Heathrow and Gatwick.The fact remains that as individual airports the London airports are going to be surpassed by no less than 4 continental airports in the next 10 years MAX. That is a tragic waste and it WILL impact on the location of business HQ's in the next 25 years.I think it's extremely unlikly that any of them will overtake Heathrow in the next 10 years. Heathrow Terminal 5 will hold them at bay for at least that period. They will start to catch up again by the end of that period which is precisely why we need an additional runway.From a Mancunian perspective London & Paris are equally glamorous for our world HQ, but if you can easily plan your trip to one airport (Charlie Boy) rather than worry if you are to arrive at any of the 5 London options it may just sway your choice. Not discounting the fact that Charlie Boy is better designed, the odd building collapse excepted (Heathrow had its own landslip cockup though).Charles de Gaulle's Terminal 1 is the least intuitive and worst designed airport I have ever used in the entire western world. At least Heathrow is clearly signposted!!The point is that London deserves better than its current rank Heathrow (sod the current investment, the place is a dump and will be until T1-3 are redeveloped in 2010+), pokey Gatwick and Stansted.This is just Mancunian jealousy. Heathrow's terminal development is by far the largest in Europe. HT5, larger than all the existing terminals combined, will open in 2008 and Heathrow East will follow in time for the 2012 Olympics. And there's nothing pokey about either Gatwick or Stansted. Stansted has some of the best airport architecture in Europe.I liken the current situation to the state of the old Wembley stadium, lets hope London can build a swanky airport to justify its status as the world's premier air hub.What the f*** do you call Heathrow Terminal 5 then? Heathjrow Terminal 5 is three times the size of the new Paris Terminal 2E, is the largest construction project in Europe, and will be the largest building ever built in the UK!!!! The Richard Rogers designed HT5 will then be immediately followed by an equally massive Norman Foster designed Heathrow East? Rogers and Foster designing massive terminals - isn't that swanky enough for you? It's far more ambitious than the terminal construction in any other European airport! And Paris and the others don't have ahope in hell of overtaking Heathrow if it gets the new runway within a reasonable timeframe.

Why is locating one airport with a dozen parrallel runways more complex than:

Heathrow- 3 runways, road and rail links
Gatwick-2 runways, road and rail links
Stansted-2 runways road and rail links
Luton- 1 runway road and rail linksNo airport in the world has even half a dozen runways - let alone a dozen. There's nothing wrong with having three runways at Heathrow and thre at Stansted. Both would offer more then enough connections ot be massive hubs in their own right - probably dominated by competing airline alliances.That is highly complex, repeating infrastructure and not a starting point for a sensible aviation policy.No it's building everything from scratch rather than using the facilities we already have that requires hugely expensive duplication. That is why both industry and government rejected the Cliffe proposal at he first opportunity.It is no use to London (BAA) that someone in Liverpool flies to Amsterdam because the connecting London airport, Heathrow is full and always will be to such connecting services.Heathrow wouldn't be full if only they built another damn runway! And so what if some people from Liverpool trasnfer through Amsterdam? Some people from there transfer here too. My French ex and her family transfered through London en-route to both New York and Hong Kong despite the fact they live in Paris and there are direct flights available to both destinations from Roissy.Potty!

Giving money & business away!

Madness!

No amount of arguements can explain how with Heathrow being the jewel for the UK, the rest of the UK finds it is restricted access! CRAZY!There is no "restricted access" to Heathrow. That is total and utter bullshit! What kind of "restrictions" does the rest of the UK face exactly? :|

I'm not complaining about London, just the inept planning.

How can anyone defend Heathrow's position, it is a farce.

Which numpty allowed construction on all sides, hemming it in. At what point did the planners (council not BAA) realise, "oh yeah this is a big airport, growing steadily, lets not build here and leave it as part of the UK's strategic planned land". Idiots, the lot of them. Short sighted, corrupt numpties!The surrounding land was suburbanised decades before Heathrow became a major aiport.London is the premier air hub by accident not design.That sounds about as convincing as that old chessnut about the British Empire being won in "a fit of absense of mind". :|

You don't become the world aviation hub, or aquire a world empire, by "accident". :|London will not have the largest airport in Europe within 5 years?! An amazing achievement for an area handling 100 million ppa.Thanks to Terminal 5, by far the largest aviation construction project in Europe (indeed the largest construction project full stop), then London most definitely will have the largest airport in Europe in 5 years.Much as I want airports to expand the ringing of London by noisy aircraft suits no one. It is not a dream scenario having only the Thames estuary with no planes chundering overhead.

All that space in the Thames for unrestricted, noise pollution free growth!

Oh well UK plc cocks up again. It may take 10/20/30 years but will London keep its stanglehold on premium traffic? It may do but why gamble when a vision can be created and started tomorrow!

Anyway, I only want to see properly planned growth and a strategic decision not to expand the ridiculously sited Heathrow.Choosing the Cliffe option would have been the worst decision imaginable. It would have involved a hugely expensive duplication of facilities that we already have. It would have been on the wrong side of London for the rest of the country. And if global warming really does cause sea levels to rise then it would have been at risk from flooding by the time it was completed. If you really must put four runways in one place, that is well away from a large population centre, then why not just add another three runways to Stansted? Why start from scratch for a 6th time? :|

I'm not complaining about London, just the inept planning.

How can anyone defend Heathrow's position, it is a farce.

Which numpty allowed construction on all sides, hemming it in. At what point did the planners (council not BAA) realise, "oh yeah this is a big airport, growing steadily, lets not build here and leave it as part of the UK's strategic planned land". Idiots, the lot of them. Short sighted, corrupt numpties!

London is the premier air hub by accident not design.

London will not have the largest airport in Europe within 5 years?! An amazing achievement for an area handling 100 million ppa.

Much as I want airports to expand the ringing of London by noisy aircraft suits no one. It is not a dream scenario having only the Thames estuary with no planes chundering overhead.

All that space in the Thames for unrestricted, noise pollution free growth!

Oh well UK plc cocks up again. It may take 10/20/30 years but will London keep its stanglehold on premium traffic? It may do but why gamble when a vision can be created and started tomorrow!

Anyway, I only want to see properly planned growth and a strategic decision not to expand the ridiculously sited Heathrow.Most of the construction around Heathrow is down to airport-related businesses. Yes there are lots of people living there, but you don't need vast tracts of land for airports - you just need efficient landing systems to get as many planes in and out.

I'm not sure how you could claim it to have become the premier air hub by accident when it clearly came to serve London as being a leading world city.

Actually with the airports distributed around London, the concentration of pollution and noise is far lower which is benefical to the environment and society. I think you'll find that the main corridor for planes out of London to the continent is via the Thames Estuary.

Heathrow will unlikely fall behind for a few more years, but even if it does there are two airports that will easily take the role: London Stansted (aimed at eventually becoming the premier airport for London) and London Gatwick.



Nick, is that true? Are they demolishing that complete terminal??? My god, Wembley suddenly looks good again....

Did I miss something? Have they made a decision on Heathrow East? I thought they still had to file for planning and with their new Spanish owners being being overloaded with debt I just wonder whether this is still a priority. I hope I am wrong.

For those people that really want to connect from Ryannair to BA I think that will become much easier when Crossrail gets delivered. Just take the train to Farringdon and then take Thameslink, taking you to both Stansted and Gatwick.Well they have to, the entire structure is unstable and when it did cave in, several passengers died. Its a funny reality that many are quick to believe that UK construction is a mess when cost overruns and faulty designs are a major hazard on the continent.

Not yet, but policy is changing to ensure that there isn't another T5 debacle over planning. In other words, expect more news in the coming weeks over exact details (for example more renderings have been made public) and a quick start. BAA are looking at a 2009 start to finish before the 2012 Olympics. I also doubt the takeover would affect anything as Ferrovial are a construction company and the other members of the takeover group are investment firms looking at making profits - so expect investment to continue to ensure that the airports bring in more passengers and more revenue.

Indeed the Crossrail projects will change the situation drastically. Already 3 have express services, while London Gatwick and London Luton are connected by Thameslink, London City just recently saw its DLR line open and Crossrail will see a station serve there to meaning London Heathrow-London City connections.

"^ There is so much bullshit in that post/article that I barely know where to begin!"

Thank you for the welcome! My first post! I knew that the English were hospitable, but not to that point.
To trigger such intrigues and speculations, passionate reactions and some insults, my arguments must have hurt the national pride of some of you.
You pretend that all I'm saying is bull****, that my post is biased, and that I am a disguised forumer (which I am not), just to hide the fact that you have no valid argument to oppose to my post. In return, I would have liked to say hello to you Monkey, Londonlad, Nick, Welcome…. but I think I will instead dwell on correcting the numerous inconsistencies you have written:

Fact: Paris CDG receives 55 million passengers a year and has been expanding at 5% a year for the past 3 or 4 years (http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_content.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-5-212-218-224_9_2). Heathrow is at 68 and not moving. At actual pace, CDG will overtake Heathrow in 2009, and Madrid and Frankfurt in less than a decade. CDG already operates 12% more flights, 25% more destinations and 30% more cargo than Heathrow (same source).

False. You say that Air France is a state protected monopoly and never had to face competitors. I have to remind you that Air France has been competing for 25 years against the –subsidised- high speed train SNCF network and that the TGV has a market share of 100% on the Paris-Bruxelles route, 90% on the Paris-Lyon route and 70% on the Marseilles and Bordeaux routes. If this is not competition, tell me what it is.
The TGV network transports 90 million people a year, of which 60 transit through Paris. Without any high speed train network, Paris airports would handle 150 million passengers, far more than London airports. British airports data is high only because: it is an isle, it has no high speed train network, and British citizens tend to prefer spending their holiday in Spain or France rather than in the UK.

False. KLM was bought by Air France and the concept is clear: 1 groupe, 2 marques. If Air France's CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta decided to retain the two brands, it was essentially for two reasons: friendly welcome the Dutch team and share their expertise without the national humiliation of closing the historical KLM brand (which BA wanted to close in its aborted deal with KLM); second, it was a bet on future growth and not on future layoffs and line cuts. Spinetta's bet (and Leo van Vijk's) appears today as a huge success as Air France KLM is first in the world in terms of bottom line (or is it in total revenues?), and the first airline in Europe (number of passengers transported and rpkm) by far.

You say that it is quicker to travel by train from London to Glasgow than from Paris to Marseilles. That is plainly ridiculous. There again, I don't understand what is the world you're living in and I wonder if you've ever been abroad. France is actually crossed by 4 high speed lines (many other routes planned). To go from Lille to Marseille (from the Channel to the Mediterranean, 1000 km or 600 miles), or from Bordeaux to Strasbourg (from the Atlantic to the German border) take 4 hours, without changing trains in Paris! In England it takes a ridiculous 2 ¼ hours to go from London to Manchester (for a meagre 270 km, 80mph on commercial speed!), and at a £200 fare (is it a joke?), on a route that cost £7 Billion to upgrade (how is it possible again, in France they built the Paris-Strasbourg highspeed line for €3 Bi! Is it what we call in France les "ingénieurs anglais"?). Tell me frankly, how many days does it take to make Glasgow-Brighton on a train? And I did not even include the fact that France is twice the size of the UK, 4 times the size of England!

Stop dreaming on a 3rd runway! Ferrovial is by now largely in debt because of the BAA purchase. They didn't even have the whole sum to buy BAA and had to borrow! Did you hear that they do not even mention Heathrow East anymore? Where do you think they will find the money or political support to have a new runway built (now that Tony is hiding under the carpet)? BAA has been asking for a third runway for 10 years now, but the government's White Paper on aviation growth received such outraged comments from political and environmental organisations or from the Town and Council Planning Association and the Mayor of London, that no PM will ever dare to take such a controversial decision that will break all the government's environmental promises and trigger a mass of protests. Anyway, British Airways doesn't even need the capacity of a new runway as BA now transports half the number of passengers of Air France-KLM, and less passengers than RyanAir. More passengers? to where? Because of its slot constraint, Heathrow offers 4 times less short connections than CDG. Terminal 5, which will not be able to accommodate all Oneworld flights, will force again transit travellers to move from one terminal to another. People in transit increasingly prefer to easily transfer via CDG, Schipol or Frankfurt than having the privilege of running through Heathrow cramped and dilapidated terminals. Even if the new runway was built, it would cost the price of gold (seen all the correlated developments needed, a £10 Bi experience?), be inefficient, out of date and lagging far behind other hubs by the time it opens, say 2020-2025. The 3rd runway is simply not viable, economically, environmentally and socially. Because of that, the decision to build, at an amazing cost, the useless T5 was an absolute aberration as it will prove completely redundant whether it is signed Norman Rogers or Richard Foster.
Terminal 5 permission was granted on the basis of a 480,000 movement cap. Heathrow is now operating at 477,000 air transport movements. Where do you plan to find the 30 million extra air passengers to fill T5 without expanding the number of flights? With Superjumbos like the A380? They will add 1% capacity at start, 4% at full capacity. Planes are already circling in the air waiting to land. Pollution is already exceeding national and European standards. How does Heathrow plan to respect regulations with 30% more flights?

Oneworld to accept Cathay? Well Skyteam welcomed Aeroflot last May and will welcome China Southern, China's largest airline, next year. With these additions, Skyteam will still be far ahead of Oneworld and may even surpass Star. (Today, Skyteam transports 373M passengers and Oneworld, 258 - wikipedia)

Before displaying passengers figures to try to counter argument, please make sure they are correct.

LeGrandArc - :laugh:

Your source doesn't work, but may I suggest this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic

If CDG is at 55mn, then Heathrow is at 70. Fact is, its closer to 68mppa and 54mppa respectively.
London Heathrow Airport - 67,915,403
Charles De Gaulle International Airport - 53,798,308

Also while CDG has been growing at 5% and London Heathrow 1%, this has been down to a lack of capacity - hence what T5 is for, ensuring that it will be able to grow even faster.

2005
London Heathrow - 0.8%
Charles de Gaulle - 5.0%

2004
London Heathrow - 6.1%
Charles de Gaulle - 6.3%

2003
London Heathrow - 0.2%
Charles de Gaulle - (0.3%)

202
London Heathrow - 4.3%
Charles de Gaulle - 0.7%

So CDG has clearly not been growing at 5% year on year. Both airports over those years saw an (added) growth of:
London Heathrow - 11.4%
Charles de Gaulle - 11.8%

Not significantly different despite the fact that Heathrow has been constrained far more than CDG has and thats despite the fact T5 will allow for far greater capacity increase over the next few years, as well Heathrow East.

Frankfurt has been growing slower than both, while Madrid Barajas is the only continuous fast growing major airport in Europe (not as fast as London Stansted though which will enter the top 30 soon). That is mainly due to the new infrastructure built and the expanded Heathrow will see similar growth as constraints and fears over pollution are met by the new transportation systems, airtrack, etc...

Also the main reason CDG handles more flights is because it handles smaller aircraft - more B747's fly through London Heathrow than any other airport...the same will be true of the A380 which will thankfully increase capacity further at London Heathrow.

Yes 150mn passengers....you forget that Britain has HSR, that something like 70% of the London-Paris and London-Brussels network is captured by Eurostar. You also assume that everyone going to London from say Manchester flies, hence why you include all TGV passengers into Paris...what crazyness is that, there was something like 82mn intercity passengers last year, the majority going into London - so should we add another 60mn to the 195mppa London hub as well? Ooh add Eurostar - well over 200mppa now!

Brits also tend to travel more times and venture around the world more - Spain, US, Hong Kong, Australia, etc...

I don't know about your points of distances, I'm not sure who debated that, but the reason it was so expensive was because it was the WCML - the busiest trunk route railway outside Japan.

I don't think you understand business...you can have debts, but still invest. It happens all the time...and why do you think Heathrow East is on the front-page, dead centre of the BAA Heathrow wesbite?

While Heathrows terminals might not be big and spacey, that is changing and let us not remind ourselves that they don't collapse and kill passengers! The entire airport was designed by the same mis-haped architect, who knows what might happen.

Perhaps you yourself ought to look at their own figures before making conclusions.

You forget that Paris Charles de Gaulle suffered a major setback when T2E collapsed - its currently being demolished and will have to be re-built. What is even more worrying is that practically all of the airport was done by the same architect...infact part of Dubai's airport collapsed and that shared the same architect - who knows what accidents will happen in the future there.



Nick Taylor, your angst and frustration concerning Heathrow's current situation do not allow you to express the wish that CDG may know another terminal collapse so that London can stay ahead. The first paragraph of your first post and the sentence "While Heathrows terminals might not be big and spacey, that is changing and let us not remind ourselves that they don't collapse and kill passengers!" of the last post are clearly insulting. Just like when Monkey said "Fortunately, the terminal (CDG 2E) collapsed." in another post.
In the Paris-London battle for the title of European economic capital of Europe, I will certainly not use any arguments of the kind. Imagine if I said "Fortunately, we're not in Britain where suburban trains kill people", or "Hopefully, London LU was bombed in 2005". Would you be pleased to read such a thing? This forum is for grown up people, not for fascists.

For the time being, let's do a bit of maths as you don't look so splendid on that account.
Years 2002, 2003 and 2004 were exceptional in aviation because of the 911 events. But if you have a look at the following document http://management.journaldunet.com/0512/0512113aeroports.shtml, you will see that between 1996 and 2006, Heathrow frequentation went from 58 to 68 million passengers per annum (a 20% increase) while CDG went from 32 to 55 (60% increase).
Heathrow T5 will add no capacity at all, how many times will I need to repeat this for you to understand? No extra runway = no more flights possible = no more passengers. Is that clearer?
Did you read what I said about the A380 or do you just refuse to?
I maintain what I said: Britain only has high passengers figures because it is an island, because it has no hsr line (don't make me laugh, your 50 miles tiny stretch is NOT a high speed train network!), and because all Britons flock to Ibiza beaches in summer (very bad for domestic tourism and economy by the way).
Yes you are right, Ferrovial is an investor, they want to make profits, in a short period. Do you really thing they'll wait for 15 years, the time for the runway to be built (the soonest) ?
And don't worry for Roissy Charles de Gaulle. CDG Terminal 2E is currently being rebuilt and will be finished before T5. The only reason of its collapse was because of its state of the art, unique conception and unproven (because never achieved before) building and engineering techniques, contrary to the very dull and basic architecture of T5. The structure will be rebuilt to the identical (the faulty concrete to be replaced by a steel structure) so that original glass panes will be reused. The rebuilding cost of this terminal will be a fraction of what the Heathrow passenger will have to pay in taxes to have the privilege to use the £4.2 Billion T5.
This autumn, CDG will open the first line of its own integrated automated underground network VAL. CDGVAL will link all terminals and parking lots. A second line is also programmed. The complete refurbishment of Terminal 1 (and its fantastic architecture that appears in many movies) will be complete by 2008. Terminals 2E and S3 will also reopen and open in 2008 so passengers will be welcomed in complete brand new installations as soon as 2009. A fifth Terminal, S4 is programmed for 2011. The same year the CDG Express line will open between CDG and Paris-Gare du Nord, as Orly TGV and La Défense TGV stations will open the following years with the south Paris LGV interconnection. (well, that's a bit optimistic for la Défense TGV). Finally, a new high speed freight station is also likely to be built near RoissyPole.
And sorry again Nick Taylor, but Paris also has 4 airports, 2 international, 1 business aviation (Le Bourget, first in Europe) and one for lowcost carriers, the Beauvais airport. So don't worry, if any has to suddenly close, the other three will take over, especially as 2 airports have 4 runways and one has 3.

Yes, CDG may not be actually world class, but just wait for a few years.

There is so much bullshit in that post/article that I barely know where to begin!"

Thank you for the welcome! My first post! I knew that the English were hospitable, but not to that point.


LeGrandArc, welcome! Always great to hear an external view!

You say that Air France is a state protected monopoly and never had to face competitors. I have to remind you that Air France has been competing for 25 years against the –subsidised- high speed train SNCF network and that the TGV has a market share of 100% on the Paris-Bruxelles route, 90% on the Paris-Lyon route and 70% on the Marseilles and Bordeaux routes. If this is not competition, tell me what it is.

Domestic flights in countries of the size of the UK, Germany or France will always only be a barely profitable business for the airlines. Its only purpose is to feed their profitable long-haul connections (in some case it is just seen as a loss leader). In that respect, given there is a TGV station at CDG, Air France is certainly not loosing out, rather the opposite.

Now what concerns real competion, Air France is very much protecting its domestic market. Remember how it took Ryannair to the EU commission and does everything to limit foreign budget airlines such as Ryannair and Easyjet taking up unused slots at Orly and regional ariports in France. Just compare the budget airline destinations from Orly compared to Stansted! On top of that it does not have any meaningful national competition by traditional operators for its long-haul or medium-haul business. BA does in BMI and Virgin.

Spinetta's bet (and Leo van Vijk's) appears today as a huge success as Air France KLM is first in the world in terms of bottom line (or is it in total revenues?), and the first airline in Europe (number of passengers transported and rpkm) by far.

Spinetta's strategy was right and has been managing AF quite well. But do not forget the cash injection AF got from the French government only a few years back, which allowed it to modernize its fleet and hence from which it is still benefiting. Anyway, airline companies should be run for the shareholders and not for national pride, so size is only relevant if it hels the profitability. BA beats AF both on return-on-assets and return-on-equity (2005).

Stop dreaming on a 3rd runway! Ferrovial is by now largely in debt because of the BAA purchase. They didn't even have the whole sum to buy BAA and had to borrow! Did you hear that they do not even mention Heathrow East anymore? Where do you think they will find the money or political support to have a new runway built (now that Tony is hiding under the carpet)? .

Ferrovial has announced that they want to build the second runway at

The 3rd runway is simply not viable, economically, environmentally and socially. Because of that, the decision to build, at an amazing cost, the useless T5 was an absolute aberration as it will prove completely redundant whether it is signed Norman Rogers or Richard Foster.


For the first time in its life BA has finally a single-terminal hub which will make transfer much more easier. Until now, BA is losing out in the transit market, terminal 5 will radically change that.

Terminal 5 permission was granted on the basis of a 480,000 movement cap. Heathrow is now operating at 477,000 air transport movements. Where do you plan to find the 30 million extra air passengers to fill T5 without expanding the number of flights? With Superjumbos like the A380? They will add 1% capacity at start, 4% at full capacity.

Errr, because for the first time BA will be in the transit market so it is going to attract more passengers and yes although BA is the largest operator of jumbos, it does not mean all its planes are jumbos and therefore there is still a lot of scope for increased capacity by upgrading some of their smaller planes.

Nick Taylor, your angst and frustration concerning Heathrow's current situation do not allow you to express the wish that CDG may know another terminal collapse so that London can stay ahead. The first paragraph of your first post and the sentence "While Heathrows terminals might not be big and spacey, that is changing and let us not remind ourselves that they don't collapse and kill passengers!" of the last post are clearly insulting. Just like when Monkey said "Fortunately, the terminal (CDG 2E) collapsed." in another post.
In the Paris-London battle for the title of European economic capital of Europe, I will certainly not use any arguments of the kind. Imagine if I said "Fortunately, we're not in Britain where suburban trains kill people", or "Hopefully, London LU was bombed in 2005". Would you be pleased to read such a thing? This forum is for grown up people, not for fascists.

For the time being, let's do a bit of maths as you don't look so splendid on that account.
Years 2002, 2003 and 2004 were exceptional in aviation because of the 911 events. But if you have a look at the following document http://management.journaldunet.com/0512/0512113aeroports.shtml, you will see that between 1996 and 2006, Heathrow frequentation went from 58 to 68 million passengers per annum (a 20% increase) while CDG went from 32 to 55 (60% increase).
Heathrow T5 will add no capacity at all, how many times will I need to repeat this for you to understand? No extra runway = no more flights possible = no more passengers. Is that clearer?
Did you read what I said about the A380 or do you just refuse to?
I maintain what I said: Britain only has high passengers figures because it is an island, because it has no hsr line (don't make me laugh, your 50 miles tiny stretch is NOT a high speed train network!), and because all Britons flock to Ibiza beaches in summer (very bad for domestic tourism and economy by the way).
Yes you are right, Ferrovial is an investor, they want to make profits, in a short period. Do you really thing they'll wait for 15 years, the time for the runway to be built (the soonest) ?
And don't worry for Roissy Charles de Gaulle. CDG Terminal 2E is currently being rebuilt and will be finished before T5. The only reason of its collapse was because of its state of the art, unique conception and unproven (because never achieved before) building and engineering techniques, contrary to the very dull and basic architecture of T5. The structure will be rebuilt to the identical (the faulty concrete to be replaced by a steel structure) so that original glass panes will be reused. The rebuilding cost of this terminal will be a fraction of what the Heathrow passenger will have to pay in taxes to have the privilege to use the £4.2 Billion T5.
This autumn, CDG will open the first line of its own integrated automated underground network VAL. CDGVAL will link all terminals and parking lots. A second line is also programmed. The complete refurbishment of Terminal 1 (and its fantastic architecture that appears in many movies) will be complete by 2008. Terminals 2E and S3 will also reopen and open in 2008 so passengers will be welcomed in complete brand new installations as soon as 2009. A fifth Terminal, S4 is programmed for 2011. The same year the CDG Express line will open between CDG and Paris-Gare du Nord, as Orly TGV and La Défense TGV stations will open the following years with the south Paris LGV interconnection. (well, that's a bit optimistic for la Défense TGV). Finally, a new high speed freight station is also likely to be built near RoissyPole.
And sorry again Nick Taylor, but Paris also has 4 airports, 2 international, 1 business aviation (Le Bourget, first in Europe) and one for lowcost carriers, the Beauvais airport. So don't worry, if any has to suddenly close, the other three will take over, especially as 2 airports have 4 runways and one has 3.

Yes, CDG may not be actually world class, but just wait for a few years.

LeGrandArc - I am not going to reply to this complete article, but there is so much bitterness dripping off your post that I guess you must have been working for Paris 2012.

Anyway, everybody knows that CDG has been growing more rapidly than LHR over the last decade because of the capacity constraints on LHR. Some of these constraints will be resolved when T5 opens and runway 3 is required to keep LHR fully competitive. At the same time, you have to consider all the airports for the region because to be fairly honest, living in London, I do not care whether I need to go to LHR, LGW, STN, LTN or LCY. So for the domestic market it does not matter over how many airports the traffic is spread, in fact it offer some advantage because the spreading reduces congestion. For transit it is another matter of course, but it is not as bad as it looks. For LCY transit is irrelevant, this is for people that want to arrive and be at their work in the City/Docklands 30 mins later. So it is better it is not bundled in with LHR (just the walking distances in an airport of the size of LHR would make that 30 mins objective impossible). For the other airports, as each of them pretty much has its own specific airlines and there is little overlap, there is no real problem for the transit market as long as people do not want to transit between different airlines. (which is not the model the airlines themselves promote anyway, except for the alliances, which are almost all of them in LHR). So the reason that LHR has been growing less than CDG, is not because of CDG competing with LHR but because of LTN and STN taking away potential passengers from LHR! This is where you logic goes completely wrong!

The number for 2005 in mio (rounded to the closest million)

London

LHR 68
LGW 33
STN 22
LTN 9
LCY 2

Total: 134

Paris

CDG 54
ORL 22
BVA 1
LBG 0

Total: 77

So the London aviation market is almost twice as large that the Paris aviation market (in fact, I should have enclosed two more London airports that are in the same range to London as Beauvais is to Paris and a bunch of private jet airports, anyway). So even if London may not be the best in transit, the sheer size of the domestic market affords the combined London airports to offer more destinations than the combined Paris airports.

The theory that you could put all of London's airports together to create a super airport of 134 mio passengers today and in a few years' time 200 mio passengers is technically just not possible. It is true that LHR needs a third runway, and the government has planned this, and I am sure it is only a matter of time it gets built. The first priority is to get a second runway at STN though, because the objective is to give STN a 70 mio passenger per year capacity.

Final point, BAA has been privatised a long time ago, so therefore none of this construction work is paid for by taxes. In fact, BAA also needs to pay for the public transportation links (train & tube).

My point was Heathrow will loose its dominance. Total passenger numbers are not relevant to that arguement. As posted by our French colleague, the chances of a 3rd runway at Heathrow are so minimal as to be a joke. It absolutely will not happen.

Ok so you accept the runway will be built. WHEN!

2020?
2030?
2040?

I would wager a bet that an American is wandering about in a Humvee on the moon of Mars before Heathrow's 3rd runway is operational. I am sure the bookies will agree.

As a nation we need to quickly decide to build a coherent airport with expansion possibilities along the lines of Dallas.

Monkey, by the time Heathrow gets its 3rd runway, would you wager Dallas would not have 12 runways before then? Just because no airport currently does not have these facilities does not mean it won't happen.

For London not to have not added a runway in 50 years (?) is a total miracle only the UK have sat on its hands to achieve.

Oh well i guess thats is why a drought order is about to be issued as well.
DUH!

Population increasing for 50 years and someone in 2006 issues a drought order! Bloody hell Spain (semi-arid on the costas) built huge canals and planned, what do we do! Put standpipes up in late August in the one of the worlds greatest cities= same numpties planning aviation policy!

The government of this country is short sighted rubbish and has been for years.

No offence LeGrandArc but why have you suddenly start posting in a skyscraper forum in the UK forum on UK transport if only to cause a bit of trouble. Particuarly as you go straight into how much better Paris will be etc etc.

Anyway

Heathrow East is well into the consultation stage (check the website if you dont believe me). Ferrovial had extensive talks with the regulators CAA about their plans for the UK airports there were buying. If the CAA weren't happy with there plans & investment they would have blocked the takeover & wont allow anyone to run down a vital piece of UK infrastructure.

http://www.heathrowairport.com/

Yes Paris is growing faster than Heathrow at the moment but Heathrow still handles around 25% more than the Paris (Thats not even including Gatwick which handles 33million & is the 24 largest airport in the world).

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004547.html

Even if Heathrow did lose its dominance to Paris or whoever it will still have very good connections. I live in Australia at present & Heathrow is by far the best connected airport for those wishing to travel to Asia & Australasia.

On another note, nobody knows if all these growth rates will continue- the way the oil price is rising they could be a big drop in flights & services worldwide for a lot of airports.

Theres also a trend for wide bodied aircraft like the Boeing 787 to fly point to point from medium sized cities rather than through hub airports like Heathrow & CDG. Hub airlines such as Heathrow will be important for large aircraft like the updated 747 & A380. But we may see more regional airports expand at the expense of the major hubs.

To say that theres been no new runways in London for 50yrs is slightly misinformed- Whats Stanstead then????

As was has been mentioned its actually an advantage to have a major airport to the South, West & East of London. For those travelling from the South, Gatwick is far more convenient than travelling to Heathrow. Ditto Stanstead for those living out East.

If Paris of Amsterdam does overtake Heathrow & im not bothered if they do, then London wont suddenly be a worse place to do business.Far from it . It will continue to have some superb connections to the major cities throughout the world.

I would actually like to see the London monopoly broken as that would stimulate more investment in Stanstead & Gatwick & its incidental where the company comes from as if your prepared to buy an airport for billions of pounds you would hardly run your investment down into the ground.

Fact: Paris CDG receives 55 million passengers a year and has been expanding at 5% a year for the past 3 or 4 years (http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_content.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-5-212-218-224_9_2). Heathrow is at 68 and not moving. At actual pace, CDG will overtake Heathrow in 2009, and Madrid and Frankfurt in less than a decade. CDG already operates 12% more flights, 25% more destinations and 30% more cargo than Heathrow (same source).CDG will not overtake Heathrow within 5 years. Nick has already proven your 55 million and 5% growth claims wrong. I should like to remind you that Heathrow Terminal 5, which is three times the size of CDG's Terminal 2E, is almost complete. It will add capacity for 30 million more pax pa. :)False. You say that Air France is a state protected monopoly and never had to face competitors. I have to remind you that Air France has been competing for 25 years against the –subsidised- high speed train SNCF network and that the TGV has a market share of 100% on the Paris-Bruxelles route, 90% on the Paris-Lyon route and 70% on the Marseilles and Bordeaux routes. If this is not competition, tell me what it is.
The TGV network transports 90 million people a year, of which 60 transit through Paris. Without any high speed train network, Paris airports would handle 150 million passengers, far more than London airports. British airports data is high only because: it is an isle, it has no high speed train network, and British citizens tend to prefer spending their holiday in Spain or France rather than in the UK.Everything here is wrong. Air France is a state protected virtual monopoly. What competitors does Air France have? What equivalents to Virgin Atlantic, Easyjet, or Ryanair? Do you realise that Ryanair carries more passengers than BA these days and that EasyJet is only just behind? Do you realise that Virgin Atlantic offers competing long haul flights to every continent? All of these airlines are highly profitable. High speed rail is an almost total irrelevance. Less than 10% of Heathrow's traffic is domestic. And despite the TGV, Air France has more domestic passengers than British Airways! So even without domestic traffic Heathrow would still be handling more than Paris CDG. And even without short-haul holiday traffic to Spain and France, London's aviation sector would still be much larger than Paris's. London has more traffic to almost every part of the world - to Europe, America, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Far East, Australasia.... everywhere!!False. KLM was bought by Air France and the concept is clear: 1 groupe, 2 marques. If Air France's CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta decided to retain the two brands, it was essentially for two reasons: friendly welcome the Dutch team and share their expertise without the national humiliation of closing the historical KLM brand (which BA wanted to close in its aborted deal with KLM); second, it was a bet on future growth and not on future layoffs and line cuts. Spinetta's bet (and Leo van Vijk's) appears today as a huge success as Air France KLM is first in the world in terms of bottom line (or is it in total revenues?), and the first airline in Europe (number of passengers transported and rpkm) by far.It's two different airlines, operating two different brands, from two different hubs, and selling to two different markets. They are only joined financially and managerially.You say that it is quicker to travel by train from London to Glasgow than from Paris to Marseilles. That is plainly ridiculous.No I didn't say that at all. I said the rail travel time between Britain's three largest cities (London, Birmingham, and Manchester) is less than between France's three largest cities (Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles) and it is. I made no mention of Glasgow at all. Therefore the fact that France has faster trains does not explain why CDG has fewer passengers because the journey times from France's other population centres are longer than they are to London owing to France's larger geography. Air France has more domestic passengers than British Airways. Less than 10% of Heathrow's traffic is domestic (without which it woul still be larger than all traffic at CDG) so high speed rail is largely an irrelevance.There again, I don't understand what is the world you're living in and I wonder if you've ever been abroad.I used to live/work in Paris and I have also lived/worked in Israel and Australia. I have visited some 50 countries on every continent except for Antarctica. I am one of the best travelled people on this forum.France is actually crossed by 4 high speed lines (many other routes planned). To go from Lille to Marseille (from the Channel to the Mediterranean, 1000 km or 600 miles), or from Bordeaux to Strasbourg (from the Atlantic to the German border) take 4 hours, without changing trains in Paris! In England it takes a ridiculous 2 ¼ hours to go from London to Manchester (for a meagre 270 km, 80mph on commercial speed!), and at a £200 fare (is it a joke?), on a route that cost £7 Billion to upgrade (how is it possible again, in France they built the Paris-Strasbourg highspeed line for €3 Bi! Is it what we call in France les "ingénieurs anglais"?). Tell me frankly, how many days does it take to make Glasgow-Brighton on a train? And I did not even include the fact that France is twice the size of the UK, 4 times the size of England!Blah blah blah.... the ECML and WCML have some of the fastest average speeds in Europe. They may not ne as fast as TGV lines but they are still fast. And like I said before the journey times by rail between Britain's three largest cities (London, Birmingham, and Manchester) are less than between France's three largest cities (Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles). The WCML is the busiest trunk line in Europe. Despite the TGV, Air France has more doemstic passengers than British Airways. Less than 10% of Heathrow's traffic is domestic. High speed rail is largely an irrelevance.Stop dreaming on a 3rd runway! Ferrovial is by now largely in debt because of the BAA purchase. They didn't even have the whole sum to buy BAA and had to borrow!They will clear their debts by selling Gatwick.Did you hear that they do not even mention Heathrow East anymore?Is that why they made an announcement on Heathrow East and released a big presentation on it just a few days ago? :|Where do you think they will find the money or political support to have a new runway built (now that Tony is hiding under the carpet)?The political support comes from the White Paper and Gordon Brown - who is looking to accelerate plans for the 3rd runway. Ferrovial will find financing an extra runway at Heathrow to be the easiest thing they have ever asked for! It's so obviously a money maker!!!BAA has been asking for a third runway for 10 years now, but the government's White Paper on aviation growth received such outraged comments from political and environmental organisations or from the Town and Council Planning Association and the Mayor of London, that no PM will ever dare to take such a controversial decision that will break all the government's environmental promises and trigger a mass of protests.Gordon Brown has certainly indicated that he will - and they have already changed the planning laws so that a repeat of the T5 enquiry is now impossible. Planning disputes are limited to 1 year duration maximum.Anyway, British Airways doesn't even need the capacity of a new runway as BA now transports half the number of passengers of Air France-KLM, and less passengers than RyanAir. More passengers? to where? Because of its slot constraint, Heathrow offers 4 times less short connections than CDG.British Airways is much larger than half the size of Air France-KLM!! It makes a larger operating profit than Air France-KLM combined. It carries more long-haul passengers than either half. And, like I said earlier, Air France-KLM is essentially two different airlines, operating two different brands, from two different hubs, and selling to two different markets. They are only joined financially and managerially. The size of the combined group is even less relevant to a comparison of London and Paris given that half of it operates from Amstedam and that British Airways only has a minority of slots at Heathrow - let alone at all London airports! The fact remains that London's aviation traffic is almost double the size of Paris's, is growing mush faster, and is much more competitive and innovative.Terminal 5, which will not be able to accommodate all Oneworld flights, will force again transit travellers to move from one terminal to another. People in transit increasingly prefer to easily transfer via CDG, Schipol or Frankfurt than having the privilege of running through Heathrow cramped and dilapidated terminals. Even if the new runway was built, it would cost the price of gold (seen all the correlated developments needed, a £10 Bi experience?), be inefficient, out of date and lagging far behind other hubs by the time it opens, say 2020-2025. The 3rd runway is simply not viable, economically, environmentally and socially. Because of that, the decision to build, at an amazing cost, the useless T5 was an absolute aberration as it will prove completely redundant whether it is signed Norman Rogers or Richard Foster.
Terminal 5 permission was granted on the basis of a 480,000 movement cap. Heathrow is now operating at 477,000 air transport movements. Where do you plan to find the 30 million extra air passengers to fill T5 without expanding the number of flights? With Superjumbos like the A380? They will add 1% capacity at start, 4% at full capacity. Planes are already circling in the air waiting to land. Pollution is already exceeding national and European standards. How does Heathrow plan to respect regulations with 30% more flights?There are currently political moves to allow more night flights and to allow use of both runways for both landings and takeoffs. However that is a short term fix. The real increase is slot capacity will come from the new runway. Larger planes will also be used. For years BA has been running down the number of short-haul European flights (typically in small planes) in favour of long-haul flights in large planes. That way they use the limited slots to handle more passengers. Instead of transferring Americans to small European cities via Heathrow they are transferring passengers between long-haul flights (eg Americans flying to India via London). That way the same number of slots are used for larger planes. :)Oneworld to accept Cathay?Cathay has always been in Oneworld. However Cathay has not been allowed to fly much to mainland China because the largest shareholder is British (Swire Group) and, until rcently, the Chinese authorities were reluctant to allow a foreign controlled carrier to have significant access to the domestic Chinese market. However Cathay has bought Dragonair, which handles most of the domestic flights between Hong Kong and other Chinese cities, so now Cathay will almost certainly overtake JAL and ANA to become the largest airline in Asia. Of course JAL is also joining Oneworld so we will have the two largest airlines in Asia (JAL and Cathay/Dragonair), the largest airline in the world (American), and the only US major not to go into bankruptcy protection, and the world's largest Trans-Atlantic and long-haul airline (British Airways), that also happens to be the best airline in the world according to the world's largest passenger survey (Skytrax - and Qantas and Cathay, also Oneworld airlines, came 2nd and 4th), and also the most profitable airline in the world measured by total operating profits (another London based airline, Ryanair, is the most profitable as a percentage of revenue). Oneworld is the only alliance that made a collective profit last year and is much stronger than Skyteam with its' huge gaps and overlaps.Well Skyteam welcomed Aeroflot last May and will welcome China Southern, China's largest airline, next year. With these additions, Skyteam will still be far ahead of Oneworld and may even surpass Star. (Today, Skyteam transports 373M passengers and Oneworld, 258 - wikipedia)Aeroflot and China Southern are no where near as valuable as JAL and a merged Cathay/Dragonair. China Southern makes a huge loss and is very worried indeed about the Cathay/Dragonair merger - as are all the mainland carriers except for Air China which is in on the deal. A merged Cathay/Dragonair is forecast to overtake JAL and ANA as the largest airline in Asia. Aeroflot is small and has a terrible reputation. It's a complete minnow compared to JAL. Skyteam remains the least convincing of the three alliances. It made the largest collective loss (compared to Oneworld being the only alliance in profit....) and has huge gaps and overlaps.

So let's sumarise....


01) London is the world's biggest aviation hub by far (~135 million pax pa). :guns1:

02) London is the world's most popular short-haul and long-haul destination by far. :guns1:

03) London has the world's largest and most competitive low cost aviation scene and the world's largest and most competitive long-haul scene too. :guns1:

04) London is the base for the world's largest long haul airline (British Airways). :guns1:

05) London is the base for the world's best airline according to the largest independent passenger survey (British Airways won Skytrax best airline 2006). :guns1:

06) London is the base for the world's most profitable airline by total operating profits (British Airways) and the world's most profitable airline as a percentage of turnover (Ryanair). :guns1:

07) London is the largest base for the world's two fastest growing airlines by total passenger numbers (Ryanair and EasyJet). :guns1:

08) London is source of 6 of the world's 10 fastest growing long-haul routes and the world's busiest long-haul route (London to New York). :guns1:

09) London Heathrow is completing Europe's largest construction project (and Britain's largest ever building) in Richard Rogers's Heathrow Terminal 5. Heathrow East will give the airport brand new terminals by both Foster and Rogers. :guns1:

10) Three new runways are earmarked to be added to the world's largest aviation hub in the coming years. :guns1:

Nick Taylor, your angst and frustration concerning Heathrow's current situation do not allow you to express the wish that CDG may know another terminal collapse so that London can stay ahead. The first paragraph of your first post and the sentence "While Heathrows terminals might not be big and spacey, that is changing and let us not remind ourselves that they don't collapse and kill passengers!" of the last post are clearly insulting. Just like when Monkey said "Fortunately, the terminal (CDG 2E) collapsed." in another post.
In the Paris-London battle for the title of European economic capital of Europe, I will certainly not use any arguments of the kind. Imagine if I said "Fortunately, we're not in Britain where suburban trains kill people", or "Hopefully, London LU was bombed in 2005". Would you be pleased to read such a thing? This forum is for grown up people, not for fascists.

For the time being, let's do a bit of maths as you don't look so splendid on that account.
Years 2002, 2003 and 2004 were exceptional in aviation because of the 911 events. But if you have a look at the following document http://management.journaldunet.com/0512/0512113aeroports.shtml, you will see that between 1996 and 2006, Heathrow frequentation went from 58 to 68 million passengers per annum (a 20% increase) while CDG went from 32 to 55 (60% increase).
Heathrow T5 will add no capacity at all, how many times will I need to repeat this for you to understand? No extra runway = no more flights possible = no more passengers. Is that clearer?
Did you read what I said about the A380 or do you just refuse to?
I maintain what I said: Britain only has high passengers figures because it is an island, because it has no hsr line (don't make me laugh, your 50 miles tiny stretch is NOT a high speed train network!), and because all Britons flock to Ibiza beaches in summer (very bad for domestic tourism and economy by the way).
Yes you are right, Ferrovial is an investor, they want to make profits, in a short period. Do you really thing they'll wait for 15 years, the time for the runway to be built (the soonest) ?
And don't worry for Roissy Charles de Gaulle. CDG Terminal 2E is currently being rebuilt and will be finished before T5. The only reason of its collapse was because of its state of the art, unique conception and unproven (because never achieved before) building and engineering techniques, contrary to the very dull and basic architecture of T5. The structure will be rebuilt to the identical (the faulty concrete to be replaced by a steel structure) so that original glass panes will be reused. The rebuilding cost of this terminal will be a fraction of what the Heathrow passenger will have to pay in taxes to have the privilege to use the £4.2 Billion T5.
This autumn, CDG will open the first line of its own integrated automated underground network VAL. CDGVAL will link all terminals and parking lots. A second line is also programmed. The complete refurbishment of Terminal 1 (and its fantastic architecture that appears in many movies) will be complete by 2008. Terminals 2E and S3 will also reopen and open in 2008 so passengers will be welcomed in complete brand new installations as soon as 2009. A fifth Terminal, S4 is programmed for 2011. The same year the CDG Express line will open between CDG and Paris-Gare du Nord, as Orly TGV and La Défense TGV stations will open the following years with the south Paris LGV interconnection. (well, that's a bit optimistic for la Défense TGV). Finally, a new high speed freight station is also likely to be built near RoissyPole.
And sorry again Nick Taylor, but Paris also has 4 airports, 2 international, 1 business aviation (Le Bourget, first in Europe) and one for lowcost carriers, the Beauvais airport. So don't worry, if any has to suddenly close, the other three will take over, especially as 2 airports have 4 runways and one has 3.

Yes, CDG may not be actually world class, but just wait for a few years.
Actually my concern is more about the development of London Stansted into Europe's leading internatinal airport.

Well surely the airport should be designed with the safe and quick passage of those flying...if it fails that then it doesn't look so good and I'm only illustrating the fear that because it happened before, it could happen again. Tell that to those who died - for what a 10mppa increase?

Ah so now you actually looked at the figures and noticed that Paris CDG actually hasn't been doing as greatly as you originally thought and your criticise my maths - you thought Paris had been growing for the last 4 years at 5% continually! :laugh:

Note that 9/11 affected London as well and more considering London of the European cities has more connections to New York and the US (the London-New York corridor is for example the most profitable long-haul route in the world).

Suburban trains have killed people in France as well. Passengers haven't to my knowledge been killed in recent years in Britain in such a disaster like the T2E incident. Paris has also been targetted by terrorists as well.

Considering the 2006 year has yet to finish, we can only rely on whole-year totals which showed that in 2005:
London Heathrow: 67 915 403 (68mn)
Charles de Gaulle: 53 798 308 (54mn)

The actual graph you relate to:

http://management.journaldunet.com/0512/images/trafic-passagers.gif

Shows London Heathrow in 2005 to be more around 56mn and not 58mn and CDG at 32.

London Heathrow: 56mn - 68mn: 12mn
Charles de Gaulle: 32mn - 54mn: 22mn

So despite a lack of capacity increase at London Heathrow, it has still grown and with the new T5 it will create capacity overflow and greater growth.

I think you'll find that T5 will increase capacity to over 90mppa...you don't need another runway, just more terminals to fit all the planes and more efficient landing systems.

It would be interesting to compare the percentage growth of London Stansted over that period though. Just over 10 years ago it was a under 1mn, now its approaching 23mppa.

The A380 will however increase capacity further.

Yet Britain's intercity railway handles roughly as many people as the TGV network....and most people don't fly around the UK as you assume to think we do. And indeed many Brits do go to Ibiza, quite a few go elsewhere because we tend not to be as insular and narrow-minded as the French. Some French might like to think the world is in France, but it isn't! And as for being bad for economy - that would explain why Britain's economy has consistenly been outperforming France for the last few years? Quite simply tourism is one of multiple industries and Britain does pretty well.

Well you might find T5 bland, but considering its in order of magnitudes larger than anything at CDG and hasn't killed any passengers yet - i'd take T5. T2E is far smaller than T5 is - T5 is a 30mppa terminal for christ sake.

I don't know honestly how many airports London actually has. It has 5 international ones, but several other out-lying ones. Southampton Airport is trying to market itself as a new London airport (2mppa), while others like London Biggin Hill is set to major development over the coming years. So there could be a 6th internatinal airport on the way.



My point was Heathrow will loose its dominance. Total passenger numbers are not relevant to that arguement. As posted by our French colleague, the chances of a 3rd runway at Heathrow are so minimal as to be a joke. It absolutely will not happen.

Ok so you accept the runway will be built. WHEN!

2020?
2030?
2040?

I would wager a bet that an American is wandering about in a Humvee on the moon of Mars before Heathrow's 3rd runway is operational. I am sure the bookies will agree.

As a nation we need to quickly decide to build a coherent airport with expansion possibilities along the lines of Dallas.

Monkey, by the time Heathrow gets its 3rd runway, would you wager Dallas would not have 12 runways before then? Just because no airport currently does not have these facilities does not mean it won't happen.

For London not to have not added a runway in 50 years (?) is a total miracle only the UK have sat on its hands to achieve.

Oh well i guess thats is why a drought order is about to be issued as well.
DUH!

Population increasing for 50 years and someone in 2006 issues a drought order! Bloody hell Spain (semi-arid on the costas) built huge canals and planned, what do we do! Put standpipes up in late August in the one of the worlds greatest cities= same numpties planning aviation policy!

The government of this country is short sighted rubbish and has been for years.A bitter mancunian teaming up with the 2-post arrogant frenchman - :laugh:

You're mad - do you know how large Dallas Airport is? There is no way I'd sacrafice that much land for runways that would hardly be used - its larger than Manhattan and nearly as large as Manchester.

We don't need multiple-runway airports, we need more terminals to go in hand with what is the most advanced air control system in Europe, possibly the world. A few runways here and there, 2 at Stansted, 1 at Heathrow and another at Gatwick is the more likely long-term scenario.

Think about it - Heathrow handles 68mppa on only two runways. Gatwick 33mppa on one. Its about efficiency and British airports have it down to the nut. We also save on wasting more land to aprons and non-used runways.

A single runway in 50 years?
4,327ft runway at London City Airport in 1987
10,879ft runway at London Gatwick Airport in 1958
10,000ft runway at London Stansted Airport in 1980
.............

The government short-sighted, the electorate is. Thats a major difference.

How can the buzzing of a little Macunian be bitter & twisted. I am merely pointing out that for the supreme dominance of BAA in London the end result is far too patchwork and crampt for the modern aviation world.

When do you think Heathrow runway 3 will be operational?

My guess is NEVER! It will no doubt infringe on some newts (non) "human rights" and be bogged down and cost £4b to build (based on Stansted) PLUS relocation of business and homes c £5-10bn????!?!?!?

They will not bother, its a smoke screen and the UK will loose its European dominance.

The figures show in a 10 year period CDG gained 10m passengers on Heathrow. Repeat that and in 2016 CDG will be bigger than Heathrow.

Does this matter? Yes, if CDG is gaining long-haul flights and jobs that may have come to the UK.

Heathrow only having 10% uk fed passengers is nothing to be proud of and shows how much business is going to Frankfurt/Paris/Amsterdam. I wonder how much domestic traffic feeds their hub operations (ok so not Amsterdam!!)?

Heathrow is too slot constrained to be of any medium/long term use to UK PLC. Admit it!

[QUOTE

A single runway in 50 years?
4,327ft runway at London City Airport in 1987
10,879ft runway at London Gatwick Airport in 1958
10,000ft runway at London Stansted Airport in 1980
.............

The government short-sighted, the electorate is. Thats a major difference.[/QUOTE]

These may have been resurfaced runways but I was always led to believe that a new runway ( in forum and the rest of the world speak) meant, you know extra land, digging and laying of concrete on land that was formerley non aviation use ie a field.

Was Stansted such a case, as far as I am aware it has been an airport since way before 1980?
Gatwick? Ok so 42 years ago!
London City? Does this count?

Fact is. Runways in the South East have been a compromise, of stealth progession to maximise BAA's profits for as minimal a long term investment as they can. Unfortunately for them the aviation business ran away from them and they have been surpassed in strategic planning by the no less than 4 European airports who have built facilities which are far better in the job of handling planes.

I do not care if T5 is huge, how many gates does Heathrow have, how many runways does Heathrow have? How many flights would like to go there but can't because it is full at the preferred slot times?

Great, so it has the most shopping space. Well done BAA. Meanwhile jobs and routes go to the continent.

Which of Amsterdam, Paris CDG , Frankfurt or Heathrow has more connecting flights AND destinations to UK cities?

Answers on a postcard to "Head of Head in Sand, BAA planning/ Government planning 1950-1986, London"

Actually my concern is more about the development of London Stansted into Europe's leading internatinal airport.

Well surely the airport should be designed with the safe and quick passage of those flying...if it fails that then it doesn't look so good and I'm only illustrating the fear that because it happened before, it could happen again. Tell that to those who died - for what a 10mppa increase?

Ah so now you actually looked at the figures and noticed that Paris CDG actually hasn't been doing as greatly as you originally thought and your criticise my maths - you thought Paris had been growing for the last 4 years at 5% continually! :laugh:

Note that 9/11 affected London as well and more considering London of the European cities has more connections to New York and the US (the London-New York corridor is for example the most profitable long-haul route in the world).

Suburban trains have killed people in France as well. Passengers haven't to my knowledge been killed in recent years in Britain in such a disaster like the T2E incident. Paris has also been targetted by terrorists as well.

Considering the 2006 year has yet to finish, we can only rely on whole-year totals which showed that in 2005:
London Heathrow: 67 915 403 (68mn)
Charles de Gaulle: 53 798 308 (54mn)

The actual graph you relate to:

http://management.journaldunet.com/0512/images/trafic-passagers.gif

Shows London Heathrow in 2005 to be more around 56mn and not 58mn and CDG at 32.

London Heathrow: 56mn - 68mn: 12mn
Charles de Gaulle: 32mn - 54mn: 22mn

So despite a lack of capacity increase at London Heathrow, it has still grown and with the new T5 it will create capacity overflow and greater growth.

I think you'll find that T5 will increase capacity to over 90mppa...you don't need another runway, just more terminals to fit all the planes and more efficient landing systems.

It would be interesting to compare the percentage growth of London Stansted over that period though. Just over 10 years ago it was a under 1mn, now its approaching 23mppa.

The A380 will however increase capacity further.

Yet Britain's intercity railway handles roughly as many people as the TGV network....and most people don't fly around the UK as you assume to think we do. And indeed many Brits do go to Ibiza, quite a few go elsewhere because we tend not to be as insular and narrow-minded as the French. Some French might like to think the world is in France, but it isn't! And as for being bad for economy - that would explain why Britain's economy has consistenly been outperforming France for the last few years? Quite simply tourism is one of multiple industries and Britain does pretty well.

Well you might find T5 bland, but considering its in order of magnitudes larger than anything at CDG and hasn't killed any passengers yet - i'd take T5. T2E is far smaller than T5 is - T5 is a 30mppa terminal for christ sake.

I don't know honestly how many airports London actually has. It has 5 international ones, but several other out-lying ones. Southampton Airport is trying to market itself as a new London airport (2mppa), while others like London Biggin Hill is set to major development over the coming years. So there could be a 6th internatinal airport on the way.



A bitter mancunian teaming up with the 2-post arrogant frenchman - :laugh:

You're mad - do you know how large Dallas Airport is? There is no way I'd sacrafice that much land for runways that would hardly be used - its larger than Manhattan and nearly as large as Manchester.

We don't need multiple-runway airports, we need more terminals to go in hand with what is the most advanced air control system in Europe, possibly the world. A few runways here and there, 2 at Stansted, 1 at Heathrow and another at Gatwick is the more likely long-term scenario.

Think about it - Heathrow handles 68mppa on only two runways. Gatwick 33mppa on one. Its about efficiency and British airports have it down to the nut. We also save on wasting more land to aprons and non-used runways.

A single runway in 50 years?
4,327ft runway at London City Airport in 1987
10,879ft runway at London Gatwick Airport in 1958
10,000ft runway at London Stansted Airport in 1980
.............

The government short-sighted, the electorate is. Thats a major difference.

Nick - that second post is not from me.

You're mad - do you know how large Dallas Airport is? There is no way I'd sacrafice that much land for runways that would hardly be used - its larger than Manhattan and nearly as large as Manchester.

We don't need multiple-runway airports,

So if Paris, Franfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam have all built multiple runway airports and are as aresult suffering huge rates of growth and Heathrow isn't who do you think is mad?

Re Dallas, concentrating resources at one point is very sensible.

^ Runways, runways, runways.... all London needs to do over the next 20 years is add another one to Heathrow and another two to Stansted. That will give it two airports with three runways apiece. That is more than enough to maintain all the connections we need. The two airports could be the bases of rival alliances too.

^^ yes but will Heathrow get the extra runway?

Will Stansted get another runway in the next 20 years?

Swampy and the boys will be out in force. It will be biggest display of Toffs protesting since they marched to London about the Foxes.

LeGrandArc, welcome! Always great to hear an external view!



Thank you for your welcome JGG!



Domestic flights in countries of the size of the UK, Germany or France will always only be a barely profitable business for the airlines. Its only purpose is to feed their profitable long-haul connections (in some case it is just seen as a loss leader). In that respect, given there is a TGV station at CDG, Air France is certainly not loosing out, rather the opposite.


Unfortunately the SNCF is not playing the game and does not offer on time connections. Now the SNCF has decided that all Bruxelles trains departing to CDG will be forced to pass through Lille, which extends the trip by 30 mn. No wonder why only 2 Million people use the CDG TGV station to take a flight. That is why Spinetta announced that Air France TGVs will run from 2011 after the complete rail deregulation.


Now what concerns real competion, Air France is very much protecting its domestic market. Remember how it took Ryannair to the EU commission and does everything to limit foreign budget airlines such as Ryannair and Easyjet taking up unused slots at Orly and regional ariports in France. Just compare the budget airline destinations from Orly compared to Stansted! On top of that it does not have any meaningful national competition by traditional operators for its long-haul or medium-haul business. BA does in BMI and Virgin.


Let's be serious, JGG. Real competition does not exist. All companies are subsidised one way or another. The DoD subsidises Boeing, Low cost airlines have been subsidised by local airports, all airlines are subsidised for their fuel tax exemption, and I'm sure examples could be found about subsidies given to BA.


For the first time in its life BA has finally a single-terminal hub which will make transfer much more easier. Until now, BA is losing out in the transit market, terminal 5 will radically change that.


T5 will be able to accommodate all BA's operations but not Oneworld's. The mess may slightly improve but will not fade away.


JGG, you also say that business aviation is actually experiencing a boom and that having 4 airports means airports can adopt a strategy targeting for very different niche groups. While I agree with your first remark, the second one leaves me more doubtful. Don't you think that spreading product offer on different sites and towards different population categories may function well with highly frequented routes but may also fail to develop niche destinations and overall connection possibilities. The fact is there: although London airports transfer more passengers than any other city in the world and that its number of planes departing every day must be the greatest, its number of destinations or of 2 hour connections, those which are highly prized by businessmen (and therefore by airliners…), is only 6000 while Paris offers an average of 17000 possible connections. That now means that the American businessman who used to fly through Heathrow will now use another hub. What is your personal point of view?

Interesting debate with a lot of assumptions and some good facts, Monkey - I may not always appreciate your posts but I can't argue with your facts.

In an earlier post someone mentioned a large multi national company would prefer Paris as a base because they have 1 main airport for all of their flight needs. Wrong, a large mutli-national will look for a city with a range of flight options. Other than New York no other city in the world can offer the competition that London offers both in terms of choice of airport and choice of airline. I'm sure Monkey will be able to tell us how many differing airlines offer flights from London to the US, I'll guarentee no other city in the world will come near.

The big bridge fella from France talks about how CDG may overtake LHR in passenger numbers at current rates of growth. Is CDG opening a new terminal in the near future ? If not where are they putting these additional 15 million pax, and that's not catering for LHRs growth.

It's also well worth noting the CDG is the only airport with significant international routes in France, (by international I mean outside of Europe). I would not be surprised if the combined total pax from the 4 London airports is greater than the total pax from all french airports. Then factor in the international routes offered from other regional UK airports such as MAN, GLA, EDI, BHX, all of these represent competition for LHR that CDG just doesn't have.

Also someone earlier mentioned the state of LHR. Let's have this right there's no airport in the UK that is in terrific state. Stansted is the most modern, probably followed by Brum (not including Doncaster et al or we'll be here all night!) neither are perfect and both have their issues. However as the comparison was with CDG, let me assure you it is just as difficult as Heathrow to get around and transfer through.

You say that the 130 Mi passengers per annum allow the London air place to offer more destinations than the Paris airports? Do you have the numbers? I don't either. But I doubt your assertion. Here is what I found:


Nombre de destinations offertes par les principaux aéroports européens en 2003 Source : ATI/OAG 2003

Francfort 232
Paris CDG 194
Amsterdam 178
Londres Heathrow 166
Londres Gatwick 118
Paris Orly 106
Londres Stansted 102

That makes a total of 300 destinations for Paris and 386 for London. But as many destinations may be in double or in treble, how many destinations are there really from each city? (Note: these 2003 numbers may be very different from the actual ones. Does anyone have an update?)


Another report, English, by futureheathrow says that Heathrow is actually #5 (and not 4) in the number of destinations and predicts that by 2015 London 4 airports number of destinations will fall to #4 in Europe with a total of 249 destinations served by all 4 London airports, while the numbers will be 383 destinations served by the 2 Paris airports, 348 for Frankfurt and 270 for Amsterdam. See graphics at: http://www.futureheathrow.org/PressReleases/FutureHeathrow%20Presentation%201.ppt

Please do not state that London airports offer more destinations than any other airport in Europe or in the solar galaxy, especially if you don't have any figures to sustain this kind of assertion.


On the number of short connections, much praised by businessmen, there is no contest anymore:

Number of long/short haul 2 hour connections:
CDG 21000
Frankfurt 13000
Heathrow 7000
Schipol 7000
(source Air France http://www.airfranceklm-finance.com/sysmodules/RBS_fichier/admin/download.php?fileid=655)


"L’aéroport de Londres Heathrow offre beaucoup moins de possibilités de correspondances
que l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle. En effet, bien qu’il ne possède que deux pistes principales
(et une piste sécante utilisée occasionnellement), il a traité 61 millions de passagers et 464
000 mouvements en 2001. Cela suppose une forte proportion de vols massifiés, avec un
emport moyen d’environ 140 passagers par avion, et une répartition des vols assez uniforme
dans la journée, soit un fonctionnement qui s’écarte de l’organisation théorique d’un hub. Un
accord est récemment intervenu pour la construction d’une nouvelle aérogare T5 d’une
capacité de 15 millions de passagers moyennant une limitation du nombre de mouvements par
an à 480 000. Sa pleine utilisation suppose donc une poursuite de la massification."
"The Heathrow airport offers many less connection possibilities than CDG. Although it only has 2 main runways (and a secant runway occasionally used), it treated 61 Mi passengers and 464000 movements in 2001. That supposes a strong proportion of massified flights, with a medium take off of 140 passengers per aircraft, and a repartition of flights quite uniform throughout the day, a functioning mode that is away from the theoretical organisation of a hub. An agreement has been recently reached for the building of a new terminal T5 for a capacity of 15 million passengers, in return for which a limitation of the number of movements at 480000 per year was set."

http://www.diact.gouv.fr/datar_Site/Datar_Transports.nsf/7abac3c1555cb08dc125655a004fdece/716603a678ff1a29c1256e590041e4a4/$FILE/Transports7.pdf

Obviously with passengers figures reaching 130 Mi passengers per annum, you would have thought that the London air place offers more flights, destinations and connections than any other city in the world. The fact that traffic is scattered in 4 airports and the use of big jumbos obviously reduces the number of flights, destinations and connections, while doubling or trebling some mass destinations.

Yes, I suppose you do not mind catching a plane in Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted in you live around London. But if you are in, say Ireland, want to make a Dublin-London-Mumbay flight, and find out that Dublin-London is on Gatwick only and London-Mumbay is in Heathrow only, I understand that some people are pretty angry against BA.

Blah blah blah.... the ECML and WCML have some of the fastest average speeds in Europe. They may not ne as fast as TGV lines but they are still fast.

How do you dare citing the WCML fiasco story??? (Hurtling towards a £7.6bn bill at full tilt, the Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2004/09/25/ccrail25.xml&sSheet=/money/2004/09/27/ixcoms.html) in which Alistair Osborne explains how the miserable upgrapding of the WCML to a ridiculous 125 mph for Pendolinos (don't ever talk of high speed here please, high speed start at 180 mph. 125 mph was high speed in the 1950's) turned into a national nightmare thanks to the genius of British engineering and all this for the staggering cost of £7.6 Billion!!! (In France, you build 800 km of new lines with 8 new TGV stations with that sum!). The return ticket is announced at £182 for a 270 km distance! I am sure you will never have the privilege to ride this millionaire only line. Some of the fastest average speeds in Europe? A 120 kph average speed compared to a 245 kph for the Paris-Lyon…Give me a break.



And like I said before the journey times by rail between Britain's three largest cities (London, Birmingham, and Manchester) are less than between France's three largest cities (Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles). The WCML is the busiest trunk line in Europe. Despite the TGV, Air France has more doemstic passengers than British Airways. Less than 10% of Heathrow's traffic is domestic. High speed rail is largely an irrelevance.


Well, no need to be a genius to make such revelations: London-Manchester is 290 km (183 miles), Paris-Marseille 780 km (485 miles) …But hey, 2H16 for 183 miles on the pendolino and 3H for 485 miles on the TGV…


The political support comes from the White Paper and Gordon Brown - who is looking to accelerate plans for the 3rd runway. Ferrovial will find financing an extra runway at Heathrow to be the easiest thing they have ever asked for! It's so obviously a money maker!!!

Accelarating? How? The White Paper was deeply buried when it was released in 2001. Too controversial. Well, yes, Expect also so support from the Hounslow, Reading, ;;;;;; communities, Friends of the Earth, Greepeace, which are all against, Ken Livingstone who is against, the Town and Council planning association who said Heathrow is a disaster, Expect furious demonstrators chaining themselves to Heathrow gates as last Spring. The government has already scraped plans to limit night flight restrictions on Heathrow and Stansted due to massive local opposition, and stepped back delaying their decisions to the "end of 2006". Don't talk about Brown's willingness, talk about Brown's "U-turns" (http://www.hertsessexnews.co.uk/news/star/2006/08/03/protestors%20force%20a%20night%20flights%20u-turn.lpf)

Ok so you accept the runway will be built. WHEN!

2020?
2030?
2040?

I would wager a bet that an American is wandering about in a Humvee on the moon of Mars before Heathrow's 3rd runway is operational. I am sure the bookies will agree.



:)

TheFly, I understand your point of view when you assert that all runways, installations and rail and road links are already there, and that it would be a huge waste of money to build a new 12 runway airport. The problem is: does London want to remain a international air transit place or not. If it does, it needs a hub capable of competing with properly planned airports. You are the first to say that.
You are right when you say that Heathrow is the premier air hub by accident not design. You talk about a new airport in the Thames Estuary. No more noise, pollution or congestion. A miracle. Of course that would take billions, but T5 already cost billions. A High speed line would link it to Stratford. But how do you plan to get to this airport? An airport so far away from the population would gridlock the whole M25 and not just the west part of the Orbital. And what about the wild life, the fact that tides may become more and more unpredictable and that the South East of England is sinking into the sea at the speed of 1.3 mm per annum?
So why not expand at another existing airport able to cope with future growth? What would be your solution?

The fact is there: although London airports transfer more passengers than any other city in the world and that its number of planes departing every day must be the greatest, its number of destinations or of 2 hour connections, those which are highly prized by businessmen (and therefore by airliners…), is only 6000 while Paris offers an average of 17000 possible connections. That now means that the American businessman who used to fly through Heathrow will now use another hub. What is your personal point of view?

I depends, and that is why the focus on niche groups is that important.

If you are talking about the average tourist, they will usually just go with for the cheapest ticket with not connections or as few as possible. Because tourists will not hire a private jet, they will accept a time-consuming connection if there is no alternative. Also if there is a substantial price difference they will accept the painful connection. Also Air France knows that. When I flew to Papeete a few years back, my flight was from Orly. The flight from London-Paris arrived in CDG though, which forced me to do the Roissy - Orly connection. Not great, but if you are going on holiday, you accept these things.

Anyway, your question was about business people. When I am on a business trip I hate connections. My company allows me to fly business class, but I will still take Rayannair or Easyjet if that takes me straight to my destination. There are a lot of smaller destinations in Eruope that are only served by the budget airlines. And not just tourist destinations. For instance there are some towns in Poland most of us have never heard of that have an ariline connection to London to transport Polish workers and their families. So basically one consideration is that the huge presence in London of budget airlines is also appreciated by business people because it connects cities directly to London where otherwise you would have to make a complicated transit or that are not covered by the traditional airlines.

As second consideration is that business people like comfort. For instance on the Atlantic routes, BA has a huge market share of American passengers because they want the competely flat bed (not something which remains 15 degrees inclined), which BA has been offering in First for about 10 years now and in Business for 7 years. In two years' time BA will be upgrading its cabins again with a lot of gadgets such as video-on-demand to select from over 100 movies etc, because that is what keeps their business and first class full. Do not forget, there is growing competition from a number of "business-class only" airlines that are popping up in London. They intend to connect the less congested airports such as Stansted directly with major centres. Here you'll find an interesting article on this topic: http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11250-1655102,00.html.

A third consideration is that the private jet market is also moving. There are a number of companies popping up that offer for parties of 5 (or more) point-to-point flights (and many more destinations become possible because of the runways can be shorter) for the price of a normal business ticket. Huge advantage is that you can determine your own departure and return times. For instance JetSet Air from London has just been set up with this purpose in mind and has placed its order for 50 jets. Again, this undermines the classical hub-and-spoke model.

A fourth consideration is that most airlines don't make any money on the short-haul flights but only on the long-haul flights. Therefore BA does not want the OneWorld airlines in the same terminal. In fact, if you fly out from London with a OneWorld partner to a destination BA also serves, you do not get miles! AA and BA continue to compete on the Atlantic routes. So the last thing BA wants to do is to have people that travel AA arrive in the same terminal where they can get a convenient European connection, on which BA does not make any money. They want to force American business passengers to fly BA on the transatlantic route (where they make the money) even if this comes at the expense of losing some potential clients. I am not sure, but a fundamental difference with Paris may be that because AF still has a much larger market share of the short-haul market and does a lot of effort to keep others out, it may still be making money here and therefore may be willing to accept a passenger flying from the US on a US carrier and then taking a connecting AF flight.

A fifth consideration is the frequence of flights. Let,s say London offers a four-hour connection and Paris a two-hour connection. But you only have 1 flight to Paris a day and three flights to London. The flight to Paris does not suit your schedule. Which one are you going to take?

A sixth consideration is the historical connections of the different centres. BA has very strong routes to the US, HK, SA, India, Singapore, Dubai, Australia and other former colonies and for AF it is not so different. My French parents-in-law had to fly to HK recently and they flew over London. When I went to Papeete I flew over Paris.

A final consideration is regarding the quality of the airlines involved. AF does a lot of work on its hub-and-spoke model and I agree it is impressive. But then they fly with these small cramped planes, where you can barely recline the seat and leg space is too limited for tall people like myself. And the service is pretty bad... with your breakfast you can only choose between water and coffee, at least with Easyjet or Ryannair if you want an orange juice you can buy it. So you do it once, but not twice.

Anyway, I think it is only normal CDG is growing more rapidly than LHR. It is not normal that the Paris region would only have half of the airline passengers of London. But I do not believe the largest growth in Paris is coming from connecting, it is from people in the Parisian region flying more. Also, what you have to appreciate is that London and the SE of England is very densily populated. For Paris it was easy to find another site at the time and you could construct quite another few CDGs around Paris. By the way, the same principle applies to HSTs. The TGV is a model that works well in areas of low density of population, when you get high densities of population it becomes very expensive. No surprise the connection Brussels - Amsterdam for the Thalys is taking as much time as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in the UK. With regards to the latter, you know that there is 25 km of twin tunnels on that relatively miniscule traject? To come back to our discussion, an airport in the Thames estuary (that is pretty much the only site in SE England where you could build a 4 or 5 runway ariport) is nice on paper but does not work in practice. First of all it is completely unconnected to the rest of the UK, which is logical because it is in the sea. Secondly it would overlap with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam traffic lines. Thirdly it would absolutely spoil some natural reserves.

As a final comment, I went to a wedding in Faro (Portugal) last year, the guy was French. Most of the French people going there connected in London (even not in Heathrow, but in Gatwick!). I don't know why, but it shows that London isn't that bad for connecting.

How do you dare citing the WCML fiasco story??? (Hurtling towards a £7.6bn bill at full tilt, the Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2004/09/25/ccrail25.xml&sSheet=/money/2004/09/27/ixcoms.html) in which Alistair Osborne explains how the miserable upgrapding of the WCML to a ridiculous 125 mph for Pendolinos (don't ever talk of high speed here please, high speed start at 180 mph. 125 mph was high speed in the 1950's) turned into a national nightmare thanks to the genius of British engineering and all this for the staggering cost of £7.6 Billion!!! (In France, you build 800 km of new lines with 8 new TGV stations with that sum!). The return ticket is announced at £182 for a 270 km distance! I am sure you will never have the privilege to ride this millionaire only line. Some of the fastest average speeds in Europe? A 120 kph average speed compared to a 245 kph for the Paris-Lyon…Give me a break.The WCML now runs at 225km/h (140mph). And if 180mph is your lower limit for HSR then I suppose the first TGVs were not HSR then right? :|Well, no need to be a genius to make such revelations: London-Manchester is 290 km (183 miles), Paris-Marseille 780 km (485 miles) …But hey, 2H16 for 183 miles on the pendolino and 3H for 485 miles on the TGV.Yes the distances in France are greater. But don't you see how the shorter rail travel times between major British cities totally destroys your earlier argument that CDG would be ahead of Heathrow if it wasn't for the TGV? That's obviously bullshit. Air France carries more domestic passengers than British Airways. Heathrow's international traffic alone is more than CDG's entire traffic. Case dismissed....Accelarating? How? The White Paper was deeply buried when it was released in 2001. Too controversial. Well, yes, Expect also so support from the Hounslow, Reading, ;;;;;; communities, Friends of the Earth, Greepeace, which are all against, Ken Livingstone who is against, the Town and Council planning association who said Heathrow is a disaster, Expect furious demonstrators chaining themselves to Heathrow gates as last Spring. The government has already scraped plans to limit night flight restrictions on Heathrow and Stansted due to massive local opposition, and stepped back delaying their decisions to the "end of 2006". Don't talk about Brown's willingness, talk about Brown's "U-turns" (http://www.hertsessexnews.co.uk/news/star/2006/08/03/protestors%20force%20a%20night%20flights%20u-turn.lpf)The protestors will obviously oppose the plans but they can no longer delay them for a decade as they did with HT5. Gordon Brown wants Heathrow's 3rd runway accelerated ahead of the timetable laid out in the White Paper. Ken Livingstone is not responsible for Heathrow. It's beyond his remit.

^^ yes but will Heathrow get the extra runway?Yes.Will Stansted get another runway in the next 20 years?Much sooner than that. The planning application will be made this summer.Swampy and the boys will be out in force. It will be biggest display of Toffs protesting since they marched to London about the Foxes.And Swampy and co will be defeated this time just like all the other times. Those protesters have never succeeded in stopping a road or runway project. Heathrow has massive security for obvious reasons. Protesters won't be allowed anywhere near the construction site.

Interesting debate with a lot of assumptions and some good facts, Monkey - I may not always appreciate your posts but I can't argue with your facts.

In an earlier post someone mentioned a large multi national company would prefer Paris as a base because they have 1 main airport for all of their flight needs. Wrong, a large mutli-national will look for a city with a range of flight options. Other than New York no other city in the world can offer the competition that London offers both in terms of choice of airport and choice of airline. I'm sure Monkey will be able to tell us how many differing airlines offer flights from London to the US, I'll guarentee no other city in the world will come near.

The big bridge fella from France talks about how CDG may overtake LHR in passenger numbers at current rates of growth. Is CDG opening a new terminal in the near future ? If not where are they putting these additional 15 million pax, and that's not catering for LHRs growth.

It's also well worth noting the CDG is the only airport with significant international routes in France, (by international I mean outside of Europe). I would not be surprised if the combined total pax from the 4 London airports is greater than the total pax from all french airports. Then factor in the international routes offered from other regional UK airports such as MAN, GLA, EDI, BHX, all of these represent competition for LHR that CDG just doesn't have.

Also someone earlier mentioned the state of LHR. Let's have this right there's no airport in the UK that is in terrific state. Stansted is the most modern, probably followed by Brum (not including Doncaster et al or we'll be here all night!) neither are perfect and both have their issues. However as the comparison was with CDG, let me assure you it is just as difficult as Heathrow to get around and transfer through.

Hammer, I agree with pretty much everything you say, just one comment though. The airports benefit from HQ locations but I am not sure they influence them that much. Otherwise, why would there be some many multinations that have their HQs in Switzerland? Of course, you want to have decent connections (which Geneva and Zurcih offer) but you don't need to be the biggest. Even public transportation is not so much a consideration because the top brass goes to work by car (they could raise the congestion charge to £50 and they will still do it, and good for them). Key consideration is taxes. London is still the number 1 location in Europe in this respect but it is moving in the wrong direction. I'm in banking and my department's tax base pretty much doubled the last 5 years. Anyway, still better than most Continental European countries (except Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland) and if the Conservatives come back in it will move in the right direction again.

You say that the 130 Mi passengers per annum allow the London air place to offer more destinations than the Paris airports? Do you have the numbers? I don't either. But I doubt your assertion. Here is what I found:


Nombre de destinations offertes par les principaux aéroports européens en 2003 Source : ATI/OAG 2003

Francfort 232
Paris CDG 194
Amsterdam 178
Londres Heathrow 166
Londres Gatwick 118
Paris Orly 106
Londres Stansted 102

That makes a total of 300 destinations for Paris and 386 for London. But as many destinations may be in double or in treble, how many destinations are there really from each city? (Note: these 2003 numbers may be very different from the actual ones. Does anyone have an update?)


Another report, English, by futureheathrow says that Heathrow is actually #5 (and not 4) in the number of destinations and predicts that by 2015 London 4 airports number of destinations will fall to #4 in Europe with a total of 249 destinations served by all 4 London airports, while the numbers will be 383 destinations served by the 2 Paris airports, 348 for Frankfurt and 270 for Amsterdam. See graphics at: http://www.futureheathrow.org/PressReleases/FutureHeathrow%20Presentation%201.ppt

Please do not state that London airports offer more destinations than any other airport in Europe or in the solar galaxy, especially if you don't have any figures to sustain this kind of assertion.


On the number of short connections, much praised by businessmen, there is no contest anymore:

Number of long/short haul 2 hour connections:
CDG 21000
Frankfurt 13000
Heathrow 7000
Schipol 7000
(source Air France http://www.airfranceklm-finance.com/sysmodules/RBS_fichier/admin/download.php?fileid=655)


"L’aéroport de Londres Heathrow offre beaucoup moins de possibilités de correspondances
que l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle. En effet, bien qu’il ne possède que deux pistes principales
(et une piste sécante utilisée occasionnellement), il a traité 61 millions de passagers et 464
000 mouvements en 2001. Cela suppose une forte proportion de vols massifiés, avec un
emport moyen d’environ 140 passagers par avion, et une répartition des vols assez uniforme
dans la journée, soit un fonctionnement qui s’écarte de l’organisation théorique d’un hub. Un
accord est récemment intervenu pour la construction d’une nouvelle aérogare T5 d’une
capacité de 15 millions de passagers moyennant une limitation du nombre de mouvements par
an à 480 000. Sa pleine utilisation suppose donc une poursuite de la massification."
"The Heathrow airport offers many less connection possibilities than CDG. Although it only has 2 main runways (and a secant runway occasionally used), it treated 61 Mi passengers and 464000 movements in 2001. That supposes a strong proportion of massified flights, with a medium take off of 140 passengers per aircraft, and a repartition of flights quite uniform throughout the day, a functioning mode that is away from the theoretical organisation of a hub. An agreement has been recently reached for the building of a new terminal T5 for a capacity of 15 million passengers, in return for which a limitation of the number of movements at 480000 per year was set."

http://www.diact.gouv.fr/datar_Site/Datar_Transports.nsf/7abac3c1555cb08dc125655a004fdece/716603a678ff1a29c1256e590041e4a4/$FILE/Transports7.pdf

Obviously with passengers figures reaching 130 Mi passengers per annum, you would have thought that the London air place offers more flights, destinations and connections than any other city in the world. The fact that traffic is scattered in 4 airports and the use of big jumbos obviously reduces the number of flights, destinations and connections, while doubling or trebling some mass destinations.

Yes, I suppose you do not mind catching a plane in Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted in you live around London. But if you are in, say Ireland, want to make a Dublin-London-Mumbay flight, and find out that Dublin-London is on Gatwick only and London-Mumbay is in Heathrow only, I understand that some people are pretty angry against BA.

You have got a point, obviously both of us know that these presentations are not completely neutral (BA tries to sell a third runway and AF tries to sell how great they are in their hib-and-spoke). Anyway, from my perspective there is no debate on the fact LHR needs a third runway (see my very early posts on this thread) and it will get one after the next election. For the Conservatives it is on the top of their list, and Labour will understand the importance as well.

How can the buzzing of a little Macunian be bitter & twisted. I am merely pointing out that for the supreme dominance of BAA in London the end result is far too patchwork and crampt for the modern aviation world.

When do you think Heathrow runway 3 will be operational?

My guess is NEVER! It will no doubt infringe on some newts (non) "human rights" and be bogged down and cost £4b to build (based on Stansted) PLUS relocation of business and homes c £5-10bn????!?!?!?

They will not bother, its a smoke screen and the UK will loose its European dominance.

The figures show in a 10 year period CDG gained 10m passengers on Heathrow. Repeat that and in 2016 CDG will be bigger than Heathrow.

Does this matter? Yes, if CDG is gaining long-haul flights and jobs that may have come to the UK.

Heathrow only having 10% uk fed passengers is nothing to be proud of and shows how much business is going to Frankfurt/Paris/Amsterdam. I wonder how much domestic traffic feeds their hub operations (ok so not Amsterdam!!)?

Heathrow is too slot constrained to be of any medium/long term use to UK PLC. Admit it!Well since most of the Mancunians were proven wrong that Manchester would handle more passengers than London Stansted you did have to find some other front to attack London on.

Who knowswhen Runway 3 will be operational, preferably I want to see London Stansted become the premier airport for London in the near future (Project Generation 1 is going to Uttlesfield District Council meaning next year Stansted will be given more space to expand to 35mppa in preperation for the 2nd runway)

Actually your math is flawed, for a start the assumption that you negate any terminal growth, in 2016 using the last 10 year growth difference, London Heathrow would have a capacity of 81mn and CDG 78mn. Those figures totally negate the fact the likes of T5 which dewarfs anything at both airports.

56mn - 68mn - 81mn
32mn - 54mn - 78mn

Infact growth at CDG it would appear has declined over the last 5 year period, showing signs that despite lack of capacity at Heathrow, CDG is most likely not actually going to catch up with Heathrow anyway.

Also as has been illustrated - CDG offers more flights, across more destinations but with fewer people - that means the routes are one of two things (or both):
- The CDG routes are less profitable due to fewer passengers per seat
- CDG has far fewer imporatnt long-haul & large plane routes

I see nothing wrong with that, infact it shows that Heathrow is probably less environmentally damaging than CDG is, simply because its by far the more efficient airport.

I'm also unsure how Britain will loose its dominance as there is no equivalent in all of France of say Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, etc.... hell there isn't really a strong airport that specialises in niche markets such as London Stansted or London Luton. London alone I think handles more air passengers than France or Germany I do believe. The UK aviation market is by far the leading sector in Europe and second in the world only to the US.

Now if Heathrow was London's only international airport and it wasn't growing fast, then there would indeed be concern but it isn't the only London airport. London Stansted is probably the fastest growing major international airport in Europe and with the 2nd runway and other expansions (for example a massive new bus and coach terminal is being constructed to handle a future capacity of 50mppa, while the cargo facilities are being totally re-built - Stansted is eventually going to overtake Gatwick and Heathrow for cargo). London Lutonis expanding very well and will probably overtake Birmingham despite that airport growing significantly as well. London City despite being the smallest and least significant is already busier than most European cities primary airports. And Gatwick - the worlds largest and longest airport walkway finished last year and links up to new piers (further increasing capacity)...its so large B747's can navigate underneath it which goes to show that major aviation engineering projects are fully within our grasp and highlights the changing in planning since the T5 nightmare.

At the end of the day, London as a whole is doing far more successfully than any airport city hub in the world. Its current position also means it can command both the futures of Boeing and Airbus' next generation of planes which expect the industry to go in different directions. Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Madrid are not geared up to handling both situations meaning they'll have to go for half-half or gear their airports to individual distance markets which with London's multiple airports can be achieved far more easily and readily...again shows the flexibility and dominance of London.

You worry about Heathrow, but forget that London is growing in a lot of other sectors. I'd best describe the situation as the decline in manufacturing in light of the rise of business and financial services. Infact I think the biggest mistake in aviation at the moment is the absence of a major low-cost carrier at any French airport, let alone any major French LCC's (are there any?). What other city can claim to being the primary residence of the two largest and fastest growing in Europe? Again it shows the dynamic situation of London - a vast air hub with so many options that it carries people where they want to go. Paris and Frankfurt might indeed have more routes - but what does that tell us when they struggle to even get close to half that of London in regards to passengers!



These may have been resurfaced runways but I was always led to believe that a new runway ( in forum and the rest of the world speak) meant, you know extra land, digging and laying of concrete on land that was formerley non aviation use ie a field.

Was Stansted such a case, as far as I am aware it has been an airport since way before 1980?
Gatwick? Ok so 42 years ago!
London City? Does this count?

Fact is. Runways in the South East have been a compromise, of stealth progession to maximise BAA's profits for as minimal a long term investment as they can. Unfortunately for them the aviation business ran away from them and they have been surpassed in strategic planning by the no less than 4 European airports who have built facilities which are far better in the job of handling planes.

I do not care if T5 is huge, how many gates does Heathrow have, how many runways does Heathrow have? How many flights would like to go there but can't because it is full at the preferred slot times?

Great, so it has the most shopping space. Well done BAA. Meanwhile jobs and routes go to the continent.

Which of Amsterdam, Paris CDG , Frankfurt or Heathrow has more connecting flights AND destinations to UK cities?

Answers on a postcard to "Head of Head in Sand, BAA planning/ Government planning 1950-1986, London"So a grass runway being converted into a runway capable of handling major Airbus and Boeing aircraft is now the same runway? :laugh:

Its been an airport, but not in its current form, the runway is even on a slightly different alignment. London City is still an airport that handles international traffic. Fact is you assumed wrong.

And? Growth of aviation in London & the South-East has outshone that of any other city on the planet. Instead of tarmacing over vast areas of pristine countryside and ancient villages, we've managed to ensure efficiency has dictated how our aviation network has grown and blossomed. We Brits are unashamably the experts in aviation efficiency - at getting as much capacity out of as little runway slots as possible and its worked to our advantage unlike other cities which have had to give up far more for far less.

I don't see how we've been passed by other European cities. Granted Heathrow at the moment isn't exactly heaven but T5 and Heathrow East will practically change - 2/3rds of the airport. Yet Stansted, Gatwick and Luton clearly show development is taking place. And clearly they can't be better if they require more runways to handle less people: that shows a lack of efficient planning and most likely wasted money which could have been invested elsewhere.

T5 will have dozens of gates - there are at least 60 plane stands. Fact is - you don't need more runways for T5, each runway can have a capacity of 50-60mppa and thats just with current technology, as Britain is an innovator in this field its likely more capacity can be created from each runway.

How have jobs and routes been going to the continent? Very few, infact I bet its been the opposite what with London being by far the greater air hub of any other city on the planet. Growth at the London air hub has been factors above any other city in Europe.




So if Paris, Franfurt, Madrid, Amsterdam have all built multiple runway airports and are as aresult suffering huge rates of growth and Heathrow isn't who do you think is mad?

Re Dallas, concentrating resources at one point is very sensible.But they aren't experiencing massive growth rates. Over the last three years, Heathrow and CDG have been growing at roughly the same rate.

2005
London Heathrow: 67 915 403
Charles de Gaulle: 53 798 308

2003
London Heathrow: 63 487 136
Charles de Gaulle: 48 220 436

4.4 at Heathrow and 5.6 at CDG. Highlights that restrained growth at Heathrow has also occured at CDG despite having more capacity...so no having those more runways hasn't helped. Factor in that T5 is opening and the capacity cap will be further lifted, but even then the the other airports have been growing faster. London Stansted has grown as fast (in total passengers) as CDG has over the same period. Its growing faster than CDG, Madrid, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

I'm sorry but thank god you aren't in aviation - concentrate at one airport? 135mppa NOW? 300-400mppa in the future? Do you realise the amount of infrastructure that would be needed to support a 300mppa airport, let alone a 135mppa one? Such a London airport of the future would have something like 1mn people departing every single day of the year - thats a disaster waiting to happen. You'd probably need dedicated express railway services for each terminal just to handle the situation, let alone how large the motorways and car parks would be to handle 1mn people just each day. You'd need an entire city just to ensure that every check-out, airline and foodstall is manned. It would never happen and rightly so - such an idea is beyond crazy.




Let's be serious, JGG. Real competition does not exist. All companies are subsidised one way or another. The DoD subsidises Boeing, Low cost airlines have been subsidised by local airports, all airlines are subsidised for their fuel tax exemption, and I'm sure examples could be found about subsidies given to BA.What a feeble excuse at promoting protectionism. Fact is France lacks a major LCC and any major rival to Air France. Its not as if its being imagined - its a reality.

The Times July 26, 2006


Third runway passes pollution test
By Ben Webster

Expansion is more likely after fears about air quality were dispelled


A NEW runway at Heathrow is a more likely prospect after a government study found the air pollution problem around the airport was less serious than had been feared and could be overcome.
Ministers are supporting a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow to allow an extra 175,000 flights a year. The runway, 1.2 miles (2,000m), and capable of handling short-haul aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320, would open between 2015 and 2020.



The 2003 aviation White Paper said that expansion could not go ahead if it would cause air quality to fall below the European Union’s minimum standard.

Department for Transport research had found previously that a third runway would expose 35,000 people living in the area to excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide. It is emitted by aircraft and vehicle engines and can cause fatal lung damage.

The new study contains results from 18 monitoring sites around Heathrow and shows that all but two were within EU limits in 2004. It also reports a small but significant downward trend in levels of nitrogen dioxide and says that nitrogen oxides and particulates are either falling rapidly or are already too low to present a problem.

The study, conducted by a panel of senior scientists, establishes a more accurate method of predicting how levels of air pollutants will change under various scenarios. The department will use the research to make recommendations on how nitrogen dioxide can be reduced sufficiently to allow a third runway to be built.

The Government has said it will make a final decision by next summer.

Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University, who was appointed to check the validity of the study, said: “The problem of air pollution is manageable and the continued expansion of Heathrow is desirable and technologically feasible.

“This report gives us a far better understanding of air quality issues and will stand up to the toughest scrutiny.”

Radical measures might be needed to reduce nitrogen dioxide to the required levels but there were no insurmountable problems, Professor Poll said.

The next generation of aircraft engines will produce far less nitrogen dioxide than those flying today.

Lord Soley, chairman of Future Heathrow, which campaigns for the airport’s expansion, said that the main source of nitrogen dioxide around the airport was from cars on the M4 and the airport’s access roads. A previous government study considered building a roof over a four-mile stretch of the M4 and installing vents to filter out nitrogen dioxide.

Lord Soley said that emissions could also be reduced near the airport by moving most of its 40,000 parking spaces to derelict land north of the M4 beside the M25. A new monorail line would link the new car park to the terminals.

John Stewart, chairman of ClearSkies, which represents people living under Heathrow’s flight paths, said: “It looks like the third runway will pass the air pollution test but there will still be the problem of a new flight path blighting 150,000 residents.”

Mr Stewart welcomed the Government’s decision, announced yesterday, to abandon plans to remove the cap on the number of night flights at Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow. “It will be a great relief for residents to have Heathrow’s cap of 16 flights a night maintained. But I suspect this means ministers have decided to focus on the bigger battle of building a third runway,” he said.

From Forbes:

Ferrovial's ADI confirms BAA to continue with planned Stansted second runway
07.06.2006, 07:36 AM

LONDON (AFX) - ADI, the consortium led by Ferrovial which is the new owner of BAA, confirmed that the UK airports operator will continue its planned development of a second runway at Stansted Airport but added it will be reviewing the costs involved as well as the plans already put forward.

ADI also confirmed BAA's continued commitment to the policies put forward in the Government's 2003 Air Transport White Paper, which originally recommended the second runway at Stansted and a third runway at Heathrow Airport provided stringent environmental conditions could be met.

A statement from BAA said in addition to supporting the Stansted development, BAA's new owners will review the plans and costings to ensure they are in line with best practice and also that they deliver value for money. The review is expected to conclude in the autumn.

^ Well done JGG. :)

^ Well done JGG. :)

Thank you Monkey. Browsing through the internet it appears to me the third runway may actually be constructed at the same time as the second Stansted runway. That air quality study is a government study so it tells us the government is preparing itself to push through the third runway. I'd like to conlude that the third runway is very much a "fait accompli", and that therefore the government may try to speed it up instead of delaying it.

Whilst I am all for airport expansion I just don't see the 3rd runway at Heathrow having a prayer of going through.

The land is already built upon involving relocating how many homes and business'?

While I hate NIMBY's I think if I had bought a house north of the current Heathrow flight path you would never have envisaged a new runway there. This will be the biggest `green' AND `nimby' AND `financial' AND `everything else' battle EVER seen in this country or more than likely the whole of Europe and/or North America!

Remind us of when T5 1st was submitted to planning and its likely completion date?

Then multiply by 2!

Add in delays and the very special `London Build Budget' (see Wembley, Olympics {already!!}, Jubilee Line, Cross-Rail, Heathrow Collapse oops sorry Express etc etc etc) and you will see this just will not happen EVER.

To be honest being a Manc and our nearest airports are all well run and funded I shouldn't give a fig about BAA but it would be a crying shame to see the Golden Goose on London air transport turned into a right fugg by the sheer stupidity and folly of their plans.

Monkey et al..... SMELL THE COFFEEEEEEEEE

Whilst I am all for airport expansion I just don't see the 3rd runway at Heathrow having a prayer of going through.

The land is already built upon involving relocating how many homes and business'?

While I hate NIMBY's I think if I had bought a house north of the current Heathrow flight path you would never have envisaged a new runway there. This will be the biggest `green' AND `nimby' AND `financial' AND `everything else' battle EVER seen in this country or more than likely the whole of Europe and/or North America!

Remind us of when T5 1st was submitted to planning and its likely completion date?

Then multiply by 2!

Add in delays and the very special `London Build Budget' (see Wembley, Olympics {already!!}, Jubilee Line, Cross-Rail, Heathrow Collapse oops sorry Express etc etc etc) and you will see this just will not happen EVER.

To be honest being a Manc and our nearest airports are all well run and funded I shouldn't give a fig about BAA but it would be a crying shame to see the Golden Goose on London air transport turned into a right fugg by the sheer stupidity and folly of their plans.

Monkey et al..... SMELL THE COFFEEEEEEEEE


Third runway passes pollution test
By Ben Webster

Expansion is more likely after fears about air quality were dispelled


A NEW runway at Heathrow is a more likely prospect after a government study found the air pollution problem around the airport was less serious than had been feared and could be overcome.
Ministers are supporting a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow to allow an extra 175,000 flights a year. The runway, 1.2 miles (2,000m), and capable of handling short-haul aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320, would open between 2015 and 2020.



HACAN Clear Skies has already dismissed these tests, claiming that they have not been regularly performed. These tests already exceed limits on 3 out of 8 sites. Real tests according to the EU standards should be performed, and in that case, Lord Soley and BAA know perfectly the results are likely to be catastrophic. See BBC story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4978762.stm





2 radically opposed points of view seem to dominate concerning a 3rd runway at Heathrow. Some as JGG and Monkey pretend that the 3rd runway will be made "the finger in the nose" –i.e. very easily, and others as TheFly who, with a more pragmatic and realistic opinion, points at all the hassles Heathrow will have to endure to build a new runway.

They can be resumed to:
• Crush the opposition coming from everywhere. Some protesters have already chained themselves to Heathrow's gates last spring. Consult the Hacan, Foe, Hounslow and other neighbouring councils websites which have already declared war to the 3rd runway
• Divert, dry many other rivers and ponds
• Decontaminate the land
• Evict and compensate all inhabitants and businesses of the part of the site which is built and relocate them

While there is not much money left in the pot - Ferrovial is now largely in debt, and the government is deficit spending at the moment-.


Then Heathrow will have to:

• Find ways to stay within pollution and noise authorized levels which are already exceeded, while taking an increase of 50% of flights and road circulation.
• Build another other terminal, establish road access to it, extend railway and underground lines, build new parkings, etc.
• Bury the M4 and invent a new way of capturing the exhaust fumes, to stay within pollution limits
• Manage to accept 50% more vehicles around Heathrow on an already ultra congested road network.


All this, as TheFly mentions, taking place at the same time as the numerous other grands travaux taking place in London at the same time, 2012, underground extensions, Stansted, Crossrail (if ever), etc. Expect a sharp rise in building costs inflation (actually at 7% a year) and in the final bill.

And all that for what? In the end, Heathrow will find itself:
• With a 2 ½ runways in 2020 while CDG, Schipol or Frankfurt had already 4 by 2005, just capable of coping with traffic growth for…a couple of years, when, again congested, people will realize that this time, there is nothing left to expand…
• A useless capacity extension in a congested environment, as there is no free space anyway around Heathrow for expanding businesses, logistics warehouses or office space.
• A crazy bill. Seen the inflation mentioned above and all the exceptional works needed, I expect a final price tag between $10 and 15 Billion.


So, I think that even if I were British, in the interest of my nation and of its finances, I would certainly NOT decide to build a inefficient, out-of-date and overpriced new runway at Heathrow for 2020.




By the way, what does "mancunian" mean??

HACAN Clear Skies has already dismissed these tests, claiming that they have not been regularly performed. These tests already exceed limits on 3 out of 8 sites. Real tests according to the EU standards should be performed, and in that case, Lord Soley and BAA know perfectly the results are likely to be catastrophic. See BBC story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4978762.stm

That relates to the earlier BA study. The recent report (enf July) is a government study. I assume that after BA did its biased study, the government ordered an objective study. Also, it does not mean anything whether HACAN Clear Skies dismisses tests; HACAN is anit-airport and anti-plane, as it is in their name, they want the sky to be clear of planes.

A sixth consideration is the historical connections of the different centres. BA has very strong routes to the US, HK, SA, Australia, and for AF it is not so different. My French parents-in-law had to fly to HK recently and they flew over London. When I went to Papeete I flew over Paris.


Yes, but while growth is taming in BA and Heathrow historical markets (North America, Australia), it's booming in the whole rest of the world, where AF and CDG, but also Lufthansa increase their market share.
OK So BA makes a lot of money on business class, and will retain its highly profitable North American lines. For the rest it will be pleased to dump its domestic and less profitable connections just for the sake of profitability and the "quest for slots". But isn't this a niche strategy, I thought BA was a global player? The numbers for Jan-May 2006 are here: http://www.aea.be/AEAWebsite/Presentation_Tier/Pr_GroupMenuItem.aspx?NodeID=rootMenu403
January-May 2006 Passengers boarded/ Traffic in RPKM
Air France KLM 28.3 Mi / 77,400
Lufthansa 23.8 Mi / 52,900
BA 14,3 Mi / 46,200
Iberia 11 Mi / 20000
They pretend it's so good to have all these airlines to fly with, but a future consolidation is inevitable in the European sky sooner or later, and some airlines may be a prey of choice.




But I do not believe the largest growth in Paris is coming from connecting, it is from people in the Parisian region flying more. Also, what you have to appreciate is that London and the SE of England is very densily populated. For Paris it was easy to find another site at the time and you could construct quite another few CDGs. By the way, the same principle applies to HSTs. The TGV is a model that works well in areas of low density of population, when you get high sensities of population it becomes very expensive. No surprise the connection Brussels - Amsterdam for the Thalys is taking as much time as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in the UK. With regards to the latter, you know that there is 25 km of twin tunnels on that relatively miniscule traject? To come back to our discussion, an airport in the Thames estuary (that is pretty much the only site in SE England where you could build a 4 or 5 runway ariport) is nice on paper but does not work in practice. First of all it is completely unconnected to the rest of the UK, which is logical because it is in the sea. Secondly it would overlap with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam traffic lines. Thirdly it would absolutely spoil some natural reserves.



I didn't know about these tunnels on the hsl zuid line. I just don't remember in which decade the decision to build this line was taken…I remember having heard of the PBK line (and PBKA, and then the PBKAL, Paris, Bruxelles, Koln, Amsterdam, London) in the early 80's… I don't understand as well how it can take 3 hours 10 mn to make Paris-Amsterdam (500 km), 10 mn longer than the 780 km Paris-Marseille route…
Of course I understand that the SE of England is much more populated than France and that obviously makes the planning of train lines, motorways or airports more difficult. But Japan proved it possible to implement high speed lines in a highly dense country. But I think that the 10 years delay to open the CTRL line was more due to political will than to population over density in the Kent area. The over density of a country must therefore be even more controlled and monitored by a central body capable of defining the "great lines" for the next half century. What the UK needs is more decisionary bodies with long term vision.

Plans for CDG were destined to Le Bourget airport. They eventually realised that if the airport was to grow to that point, it wouldn't be able to cope with traffic (even as it already have 3 runways, yes 3).

JGG, you talk about tourist and cheap flights, do you really believe this trend will carry on and on? The rise of the barril. Increasing environmental pressure. The EU is already talking about taxing airline fuel. Ravages of the air transport business are confirmed in the upper layer of the atmosphere and CO2 and NO levels are already exceeding pollution standards. When will this madness of cheap flights will stop?

2 radically opposed points of view seem to dominate concerning a 3rd runway at Heathrow. Some as JGG and Monkey pretend that the 3rd runway will be made "the finger in the nose" –i.e. very easily, and others as TheFly who, with a more pragmatic and realistic opinion, points at all the hassles Heathrow will have to endure to build a new runway.

They can be resumed to:
• Crush the opposition coming from everywhere. Some protesters have already chained themselves to Heathrow's gates last spring. Consult the Hacan, Foe, Hounslow and other neighbouring councils websites which have already declared war to the 3rd runway
• Divert, dry many other rivers and ponds
• Decontaminate the land
• Evict and compensate all inhabitants and businesses of the part of the site which is built and relocate them

OK, that's a fundamental difference between the UK and France. In France decisions are taken top-down, which has its advantages (speed, strategic, consistency) but also its disadvantages (disconnect from reality). In the UK decision are taken in a more organic, bottom-up fashion. That has its disadvantages (mainly slowliness) but as main advantage that eventually they are carried by the population. That explains why France has troubles reforming its socio-economic system and why the UK has less problems doing so (whilst students in France were on strike and destroying their schools against the CPE in the UK a consensus was announced that anybody born after 1975 would only be able to retire at the age of 68 - after a debate taking three years). It also explains why France has a better infrastructure than the UK because the French system makes its easier to take visionary decisions (eg most of the Paris population was against CDG originally because it was too far away, today it shows it was the right strategic and visionary decision). What I notice right now is that the government is warming up the population... so it's just a matter of time.


While there is not much money left in the pot - Ferrovial is now largely in debt, and the government is deficit spending at the moment-.

First of all the government does not have to pay for this and once the permission is given Ferrovial will be all to happy to finance this - otherwise their shareholders would punish their management. Ferrovial want the third runway asap!



Then Heathrow will have to:

• Find ways to stay within pollution and noise authorized levels which are already exceeded, while taking an increase of 50% of flights and road circulation.
• Build another other terminal, establish road access to it, extend railway and underground lines, build new parkings, etc.
• Bury the M4 and invent a new way of capturing the exhaust fumes, to stay within pollution limits

They'll be very glad they can build another terminal. With regards to the pollution, they'll have to put in place a few more rail schemes (just as the Paris airports do).


• Manage to accept 50% more vehicles around Heathrow on an already ultra congested road network.

It is less congested than CDG. I fly out of LHR once a week approx, I live in Westminster and it takes me 25 - 35 mins to get to the LHR, depending on the time of the day. It is pretty reliable, so I typically leave home 75 mins before departure. The last ten years, I only missed two flights at LHR because of traffic jams. In contrast, in Paris I have had much worse experience. Once I spent 2.5 hours to get from the Plaza Athenee to CDG! Needless to say I missed my plane. OK that was during the day, but also in the early morning you have already traffic jams to CDG!


All this, as TheFly mentions, taking place at the same time as the numerous other grands travaux taking place in London at the same time, 2012, underground extensions, Stansted, Crossrail (if ever), etc. Expect a sharp rise in building costs inflation (actually at 7% a year) and in the final bill.

That's what the EU is for. There are enough builders from Eastern Europe and construction firms from France, the Netherlands and particularly Germany (as their construction market is slowing down) operating in the London market. Particularly for the large projects there is a lot of competition. Bottom line: the construction market is efficient enough to deal with this.


And all that for what? In the end, Heathrow will find itself:
• With a 2 ½ runways in 2020 while CDG, Schipol or Frankfurt had already 4 by 2005, just capable of coping with traffic growth for…a couple of years, when, again congested, people will realize that this time, there is nothing left to expand…
• A useless capacity extension in a congested environment, as there is no free space anyway around Heathrow for expanding businesses, logistics warehouses or office space.
• A crazy bill. Seen the inflation mentioned above and all the exceptional works needed, I expect a final price tag between $10 and 15 Billion..

They need to grow LHR to the max whilst they are building out STN. And there is no reason they could not turn LHR and STN in one single airport, by connecting them by maglev. If it takes you 20 mins between LHR and STN, they basically become terminals of the same ariport. Anyway that will take another 20 years until that is needed. By that time the Chinese will be manufacturing the maglev and it will be more affordable.


So, I think that even if I were British, in the interest of my nation and of its finances, I would certainly NOT decide to build a inefficient, out-of-date and overpriced new runway at Heathrow for 2020. ..

Don't worry, it is the equity holders paying for that. The market cap of ADP is euro 4 bio, BAA got sold for euro 15 bio. If things change and the economics are not right, it will not get built, but today the economics for a third runway at LHR are so good that they want to build it asap

^ ^ A Mancunian is someone who is from Manchester. Liverpudlian = Liverpool, Glaswegian = Glasgow, I can't think of any other strange sounding ones (or what people from Edinburgh are called either).

Thank you Monkey. Browsing through the internet it appears to me the third runway may actually be constructed at the same time as the second Stansted runway. That air quality study is a government study so it tells us the government is preparing itself to push through the third runway. I'd like to conlude that the third runway is very much a "fait accompli", and that therefore the government may try to speed it up instead of delaying it.:yes: LeGrandArc and TheFly are going to be disappointed. ;)

:yes: LeGrandArc and TheFly are going to be disappointed. ;)

If this out of nowhere no news conforts you Monkey, it must mean that the case for R3 is really desperate.

^ ^ A Mancunian is someone who is from Manchester. Liverpudlian = Liverpool, Glaswegian = Glasgow, I can't think of any other strange sounding ones (or what people from Edinburgh are called either).

Thanks for the precision samsonyuen! That sounds strange. But do the English really use these adjectives as the French say usually Parisiens or Marseillais, or is it only used in a special context?




By the way, that is the first proper and interesting information I got since I landed on this forum a few days ago. No I'm kidding guys, you are so wonderful, and so friendly...

Yes, but while growth is taming in BA and Heathrow historical markets (North America, Australia), it's booming in the whole rest of the world, where AF and CDG, but also Lufthansa increase their market share.?

Errr, BA, India?

OK So BA makes a lot of money on business class, and will retain its highly profitable North American lines. For the rest it will be pleased to dump its domestic and less profitable connections just for the sake of profitability and the "quest for slots". But isn't this a niche strategy, I thought BA was a global player? The numbers for Jan-May 2006 are here: http://www.aea.be/AEAWebsite/Presentation_Tier/Pr_GroupMenuItem.aspx?NodeID=rootMenu403
January-May 2006 Passengers boarded/ Traffic in RPKM
Air France KLM 28.3 Mi / 77,400
Lufthansa 23.8 Mi / 52,900
BA 14,3 Mi / 46,200
Iberia 11 Mi / 20000
They pretend it's so good to have all these airlines to fly with, but a future consolidation is inevitable in the European sky sooner or later, and some airlines may be a prey of choice.

Yes, just like AF took over KLM. But what is your point? I personally do not care who owns the airlines but what service at what price it delivers. And that will be guaranteed as long as there is competition.

I didn't know about these tunnels on the hsl zuid line. I just don't remember in which decade the decision to build this line was taken…I remember having heard of the PBK line (and PBKA, and then the PBKAL, Paris, Bruxelles, Koln, Amsterdam, London) in the early 80's… I don't understand as well how it can take 3 hours 10 mn to make Paris-Amsterdam (500 km), 10 mn longer than the 780 km Paris-Marseille route….

A lot of it runs over upgraded track but no real HS track. Same problem in the Netherlands and Belgium as in SE England.

Of course I understand that the SE of England is much more populated than France and that obviously makes the planning of train lines, motorways or airports more difficult. But Japan proved it possible to implement high speed lines in a highly dense country. But I think that the 10 years delay to open the CTRL line was more due to political will than to population over density in the Kent area. The over density of a country must therefore be even more controlled and monitored by a central body capable of defining the "great lines" for the next half century. What the UK needs is more decisionary bodies with long term vision.

In general I agree with your statement about the lack of vision, but in the case of the CTRL it does not apply. Reason for the delay has a lot to do with the fact the government wants an integrated HST network eventually, i.e. where you do not need to change stations in London. So Kings's Cross / St Pancras will be London's sole HST hub. Also, they did not want to make a huge loop around London because that would just have added to travel times (just like the loop around Paris is not great, and Paris is not as much spread out as London). So they decided on going under London, which required 25 kms of twin tunneling. That was expensive and it took a while to get the finance organised for that part of CTRL (the other part has been operating for a few years already).

JGG, you talk about tourist and cheap flights, do you really believe this trend will carry on and on? The rise of the barril. Increasing environmental pressure. The EU is already talking about taxing airline fuel. Ravages of the air transport business are confirmed in the upper layer of the atmosphere and CO2 and NO levels are already exceeding pollution standards. When will this madness of cheap flights will stop?

IMO, it will not stop - flying will just become like taking the bus. I agree though the EU should tax kerosine such that the cost to the environment is fully priced in.

If this out of nowhere no news conforts you Monkey, it must mean that the case for R3 is really desperate.It's going to happen. London's aviation is going to continue growing much faster than Paris's. :)

Some facts:

Airline Passenger Volumes (in millions)

1995 2005 Increase
London* 83 134 61%
Paris* 55 77 40%
Frankfurt 38 52 37%
Amsterdam 25 44 76%

* For Paris and London aggregation of all airports

So Amsterdam and London have been growing the fastest, Paris and Frankfurt the slowest. Whilst the difference between Paris and London was 28 mio passengers in '95, it was 57 mio passengers in '05, which is almost a doubling of the gap. Interesting to note is that the Netherlands and the UK were the first in Europe to deregulate their markets.

Airline Fleets

I only count Boeing and Airbus planes, all other little crap I have omitted (Embraer, BeA, etc). I have also excluded cargo.

UK-based airlines

BA* 254
Easyjet 117
Virgin Atlantic* 33
BMI 28
Jet2 28
BMI Baby 19
Flyglobespan 8
Flybe 3

Total 490

France-based airlines

AF 258
CCM Airlines 4

Total 262

Netherlands-based airlines

KLM 108

Total 108

Germany-based airlines

Lufthansa 241
Air Berlin 55
Germanwings 23
Blue Wings 1
Cirrus 1

Total 321

* For BA and Virgin I have excluded their foreing subsidiaries as technically speaking these are separate companies combined at holding level. That is also why I don't take AF and KLM together as they are operating from two different countries. I have also not shown Ryanair, although it has its main hubs in the UK, but it is Irish owned and operated. I have also excluded charters such as Monarch, Thomson, etc

JGG

You are quite right, what I was trying to get accross was that a company, if it relied upon air links and needed them to factor in a decision would look for the choice that a city airlinks could provide.

Thanks for the precision samsonyuen! That sounds strange. But do the English really use these adjectives as the French say usually Parisiens or Marseillais, or is it only used in a special context?




By the way, that is the first proper and interesting information I got since I landed on this forum a few days ago. No I'm kidding guys, you are so wonderful, and so friendly...

Who is being friendly here? We take the time to debate with you, spend a lot of time looking up the facts, and you claim that nobody tried to provide you with proper and interesting information? I love controversial and critical views, but there is no reason to become rude. Is the only reason that you come here that we all say, yes, London airports are shit and Paris airports are heaven? :bash:

Bit of news from propertyweek- Didn't know what thread to post it in so mightg as well put it here.


- - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- - -- -- -
A decision from Brussels on the Department for Transport bid for Airtrack, a £400m direct rail link to Heathrow from Waterloo, Guildford and Staines, is expected before the end of the year.

The project has been proposed by South West London Transport Conference, which includes Wandsworth Council, BA, BAA, Network Rail, the DfT and local councils, to improve access to Heathrow airport’s Terminal 5 and reduce the journey time to less than 30 minutes.

The project would make use of the facilities used by Eurostar, which will move to St Pancras next year, including the Eurostar terminal, five platforms at Waterloo station and an additional track from Queenstown Road station.

Sorry JGG, you say I'm being rude, but my remark concerning interesting arguments was not precisely intended to you. My first original post was certainly firmly stated but I don't think it was controversial, rude or English-bashing. Please read it again. I expressed my point of view and a few possible explorations of solutions to solve the problem, which is, whatever some of you might think, a problem! Some people, touched in their vanity, have felt utterly attacked by my arguments and have violently answered to me, rejoicing for instance that a terminal roof had collapsed in Paris and killed people.
I'm not the one who said that Heathrow is a national disaster, it's the Town and Council Planning Association, for God's sake!
And your arguments remain very interesting as long as they are not biased.

OK, that's a fundamental difference between the UK and France. In France decisions are taken top-down, which has its advantages (speed, strategic, consistency) but also its disadvantages (disconnect from reality). In the UK decision are taken in a more organic, bottom-up fashion. That has its disadvantages (mainly slowliness) but as main advantage that eventually they are carried by the population. That explains why France has troubles reforming its socio-economic system and why the UK has less problems doing so (whilst students in France were on strike and destroying their schools against the CPE in the UK a consensus was announced that anybody born after 1975 would only be able to retire at the age of 68 - after a debate taking three years). It also explains why France has a better infrastructure than the UK because the French system makes its easier to take visionary decisions (eg most of the Paris population was against CDG originally because it was too far away, today it shows it was the right strategic and visionary decision). What I notice right now is that the government is warming up the population... so it's just a matter of time.



You pretend that in France the population is left in the dark and imposed new lines or motorways without any kind of consultation. You are asserting things, but do you have any proof of what you advance? Personally, I say, I don't know. But what I know is that administrative hassles and communities general meetings are highly frequent in France and road and rail projects have to submit to long public inquiries. That is why now most motorways built around Paris are built underground. The only difference with the UK, is that in the end the French state takes a decision and firmly sticks to it. That's all.


First of all the government does not have to pay for this and once the permission is given Ferrovial will be all to happy to finance this - otherwise their shareholders would punish their management. Ferrovial want the third runway asap!


Ferrovial shareholders want a quick return on investment, they will not wait 20 years. Today is the Spanglish honeymoon. How long will the wedding last? :)



They'll be very glad they can build another terminal. With regards to the pollution, they'll have to put in place a few more rail schemes (just as the Paris airports do).


How many terminals in total? Having to build again new terminals while others are in derelict state? Is that really wise?



It is less congested than CDG. I fly out of LHR once a week approx, I live in Westminster and it takes me 25 - 35 mins to get to the LHR, depending on the time of the day. It is pretty reliable, so I typically leave home 75 mins before departure. The last ten years, I only missed two flights at LHR because of traffic jams. In contrast, in Paris I have had much worse experience. Once I spent 2.5 hours to get from the Plaza Athenee to CDG! Needless to say I missed my plane. OK that was during the day, but also in the early morning you have already traffic jams to CDG!



The road circulation in central London is good only because as there are no motorways, there are no incoming cars, so no traffic! This assertion may sound ridiculous, but get down to the facts: Especially as you have driven through Paris, do not ever try to compare Paris road infrastructure and road traffic numbers to London's, its 4 ringroads compared to London's one and a half (no, and a third), its 200 km of motorway tunnels compared to London's "Black wall tunnel" or Dartford; the A1 is 16 lanes wide between CDG and Le Bourget (go to Google map, type Garonor, France), compared to the miserable 4 or 5 lane roundabouted motorway linking Heathrow to the centre, and the 6 motorways and expressways reaching CDG (8 soon) to the 2 linking Heathrow. The M25 may have recently been widened to 12 lanes, it remains a dwarf compared to Paris road standards.
Living in Westminster shortens your travel, and it would be much different if you were living in Greenwich. Paris cars are not moving, because contrary to London, car usage in Paris has been democraticized and there are too many of them. When I lived in "central" London it took me one hour to drive Finsbury Park-Hammersmith or Finsbury-Catford day or night, where the same distance in Paris would be have been a third of the time via the inner motorways, expressways and périphériques (when no traffic jams, I concede).
London may have a lot of motorways radiating from the Orbital, but within the city, it's the desert. Concerning motorway infrastructures, everyone will agree that Paris has the network of a megapolis while London has the road network of a medium provincial city.

Somehow, I'm not so sure Heathrow will be phased out in the next century save for a major transportation technological / economic issue. Far too much money has been invested in and around Heathrow both by government and the private sector. Growth though is a different issue. The airport may nudge the 100M mark in the next decade or two, but can airports expand significantly more? While focus on growth in the SE is still towards Stanstead, Gatwick is still the #2 airport and more than able to expand too (despite the NIMBYs). If these airports (and Luton?) can connect to each other with a high speed line, and luggage can be coordinated similarly to interchange as currently between terminals, perhaps they can function together as one large London airport hub. Is this the future?

You pretend that in France the population is left in the dark and imposed new lines or motorways without any kind of consultation. You are asserting things, but do you have any proof of what you advance? Personally, I say, I don't know. But what I know is that administrative hassles and communities general meetings are highly frequent in France and road and rail projects have to submit to long public inquiries. That is why now most motorways built around Paris are built underground. The only difference with the UK, is that in the end the French state takes a decision and firmly sticks to it. That's all.

I think the French government has been strategic and visionary when it comes to taking transport decisions, unlike the UK. THe UK is more organic and UK politicians are closer to the population, that is why they are better positioned to push through tough measures.

Ferrovial shareholders want a quick return on investment, they will not wait 20 years. Today is the Spanglish honeymoon. How long will the wedding last? :) .

Well, IMO, first of all it is unlikely they will get a quick return on investment given the price they paid for it. I look at this in pure economic terms. Ferrovial management believes that they are better at "running" the London airports than BAA management was. The market has believed Ferrovial - that is why the take-over took place. Note I put the word "running" in between quotes. Running means extracting value for the shareholders. Nothing else. As a shareholder I would get very upset if BAA had started with some experimental architecture as ADP did. If some British or French nationalists want some monuments around the airport, then they should pay for it, not the shareholders of the airport operator. BAA took the T5 decision, which is an expensive project, only because it made a lot of economic sense. Finally, don't forget that if Ferrovial does not invest, the regulator will undoubtedly take down the landing rights as the yield on assets will be able to come down because there is no risk (associated with investment).


How many terminals in total? Having to build again new terminals while others are in derelict state? Is that really wise?

"Derelict state"; what do you mean? I travel through LHR once a week and yes, T1 and particulrarly T2 are very cramped, buyt they are not derelict.

The road circulation in central London is good only because as there are no motorways, there are no incoming cars, so no traffic! This assertion may sound ridiculous, but get down to the facts: Especially as you have driven through Paris, do not ever try to compare Paris road infrastructure and road traffic numbers to London's, its 4 ringroads compared to London's one and a half (no, and a third), its 200 km of motorway tunnels compared to London's "Black wall tunnel" or Dartford; the A1 is 16 lanes wide between CDG and Le Bourget (go to Google map, type Garonor, France), compared to the miserable 4 or 5 lane roundabouted motorway linking Heathrow to the centre, and the 6 motorways and expressways reaching CDG (8 soon) to the 2 linking Heathrow. The M25 may have recently been widened to 12 lanes, it remains a dwarf compared to Paris road standards.
Living in Westminster shortens your travel, and it would be much different if you were living in Greenwich. Paris cars are not moving, because contrary to London, car usage in Paris has been democraticized and there are too many of them. When I lived in "central" London it took me one hour to drive Finsbury Park-Hammersmith or Finsbury-Catford day or night, where the same distance in Paris would be have been a third of the time via the inner motorways, expressways and périphériques (when no traffic jams, I concede).
London may have a lot of motorways radiating from the Orbital, but within the city, it's the desert. Concerning motorway infrastructures, everyone will agree that Paris has the network of a megapolis while London has the road network of a medium provincial city.

Your last sentence is biased... I do not know why you make these bitter statements. Anyway, yes I agree the motorway network in France is better than in the UK and the ringroads and axial roads in Paris are much better than in London. If you check other threads, you will see I have made that statement over and over. But we were talking about congestion, where I show you that your original claim that every road to and around LHR is congested is wrong, it applies as much to CDG.

You've touched on something I'd like to improve, the connection between the airports. I don't know if it'd be cost-conscious to have highspeed between the airports though.

You've touched on something I'd like to improve, the connection between the airports. I don't know if it'd be cost-conscious to have highspeed between the airports though.

It is certainly feasible, and considering the cost of new runways it will make a lot of economic sense at some point. AF in that repects intends to connect both Amsterdam and Roissy with an airline shuttle every 30 mins. So there is no reason why two London airports could not be connected by a high speed train or maglev system. After all, all of them are on a motorway branch of the M25, so the track could just follow the M25 and then the motorway from the M25. Note the Airtrack connection for Heathrow T5 with Reading and Waterloo will allready do exactly that.

However, ultimately the question remains whether the hub model will become more or less important. Both at CDG and LHR, the transfer passengers as a percentage of overall passengers have remained constant at about 30 - 35% for the last 5 years. Passengers hate to connect, it is that simple.

The following shows you the number of transfers at the four main European airports. Over the last five years, Frankfurt remained in pole position, followed by LHR. Despite what LeGrandArc is pretending here, it is interesting to note that CDG has been making least progress.

Airport 2000 2004
FRA 24 27
LHR 19 23
AMS 17 19
CDG 17 17

Anyway, LHR can up its capacity to 120 mio passengers a year by building a third runway and a sixth terminal. In addition, once it is clear it can build T6 and R3 it has decided it will install a people mover system between all terminals to make transfer easier.

For LHR's latest masterplan: http://www.baa.co.uk/assets/B2CPortal/Static%20Files/LHRInterimMasterPlan.pdf

You've touched on something I'd like to improve, the connection between the airports. I don't know if it'd be cost-conscious to have highspeed between the airports though.


Personally I don't know if a high speed link between two airports really makes sense. Some believe that a maglev line would make sense, but that would imply huge infrastructure costs which make, in my point of view, the project unviable. JGG explains that some tourists may not bother landing at Orly to transfer at CDG, or land at Gatwick to transfer at Heathrow. I don't know about the reality of things.
In the case of Paris, a high speed east and south ringroad around Paris will allow non stop East-West or North-South trips. The interest of a Orly TGV station on the south stretch is not its direct link to CDG, but that Orly will be accessible by the whole French TGV network. But I may not be visionary, and the future 30 mn CDG-Orly high speed line may prove very successful, all the more as this line will link CDG, Marne La Vallée Disneyland, Orly, the research centre of Saclay and in the future, La Défense, a real orbital high speed network.

Personally I don't know if a high speed link between two airports really makes sense. Some believe that a maglev line would make sense, but that would imply huge infrastructure costs which make, in my point of view, the project unviable. JGG explains that some tourists may not bother landing at Orly to transfer at CDG, or land at Gatwick to transfer at Heathrow. I don't know about the reality of things.
In the case of Paris, a high speed east and south ringroad around Paris will allow non stop East-West or North-South trips. The interest of a Orly TGV station on the south stretch is not its direct link to CDG, but that Orly will be accessible by the whole French TGV network. But I may not be visionary, and the future 30 mn CDG-Orly high speed line may prove very successful, all the more as this line will link CDG, Marne La Vallée Disneyland, Orly, the research centre of Saclay and in the future, La Défense, a real orbital high speed network.

LaGrandArc, I was not talking about a external system but and internal system (i.e. before passport control and with check-in of luggage to final destination). It would be a relatively straightforward system follwing the M25 and then the M11 in the case of Stansted , the M23 in the case of Gatwick or the M1 in the case of Luton. The longest distance from HRW is Stansted, at about 90 kms, so I will take that as an example. Assuming that line would run T6 - T123 - T5 at LHR, you have to add 10 km, which brings the total distance to 100 kms. With a Maglev system that would take you about 20 mins for T6 and 15 mins for T5 to stansted. By having that system before passport control and it also transporting the luggage in cargo. it would basically turn Heathrow and Stansted into one single airport. And people would like to transfer just for the Maglev experience. Anyway, that's for in 20 to 30 years' time unless Monkey becomes PM. :)

With regards to the TGV connection to CDG, I have been using it both from the North and West. From Brussels it is pretty good if you take the train that bypasses Lille. The problem is that these trains are very infrequent. With regards to the West, I took it from Rennes, and I must say the loop around Paris takes an awful lot of time (why ddoes it go so slow on the east?) and again the trains are infrequent. I think it is a very good idea if AF runs its own TGVs!

With regards to the connection of CDG to central Paris I think there is a lot of scope for improvement. I used the RER connection to get to Montparnasse. My god!!! I arrived on Lufthansa in terminal 1 which was dirtier than I have ever seen a Heathrow terminal. Then I had to wait for 15 mins for the bus (why are these shuttles so infrequent????) to take me to the station. Because the signalisation on the bus was not clear I asked the driver in fluent French whether indeed it was going to the station. The answer I got made me conclude that indeed the CEO of the airport was driving the bus..., what an arrogance! Then I had to wait for the RER - about 10 mins - that was OK. I took the RER to Denfer or wahtever it is called (to me it was d'enfer!); it was late and it stopped everywhere. The RER was like three quarters of an hour. And then I had to take the metro, which was fine and efficient. The whole thing took me close to two hours.

Now compare this to LHR. Whatever terminal you arrive in you have a train and tube station. So no annoying bus. Assume you are unlucky and you have to wait the max 15 mins for the Hex, still 30 mins later you are in Paddington (if you are lucky 15m mins later :) ). And from Paddington every London station is reachable by tube within 30 mins, even if London is larger than Paris.

So 1 vs 2 hours, LaGrandArc, there is still a lot of work!

Heathrow has better transport connections than CDG even accounting for the TGV. Heathrow has the Tube (cheap and convenient) and the very fast Heathrow Express (15 minutes to central London every 15 minutes). Paris has no line to central Paris as fast as the Heathrow Express. There is also a widened section of the M25 that is 12 lanes across and the neaby M3 and M4 bringing in people from the west and north. And sorry GrandArc but I don't find the outer Paris orbital all that good. It's really a string of different motorways stitched together. You have to change lanes all the time to stay on the orbital route. And the inner ring road, the Peripherique, seems to be permenantly jammed.

However it's not the transport connections that make Heathrow more popular - it's the fact that more people want to move in and out of London. It's because Britons travel more, the London/SE metro region has a larger population than the Ile de France, and because London is more of a world city than Paris. London/Britain has cultural and historic links to a much larger, richer, and more populous former colonial empire, and there's also the close economic, cultural, and political relationship to the US and other English speaking countries, and finally London's role as the EU's premier "city of opportunity" for Europe's (and the world's....) young and ambitious - an advantage owed to London speaking English and being more culturally open to foreigners than Paris.

Whilst I am all for airport expansion I just don't see the 3rd runway at Heathrow having a prayer of going through.

The land is already built upon involving relocating how many homes and business'?

While I hate NIMBY's I think if I had bought a house north of the current Heathrow flight path you would never have envisaged a new runway there. This will be the biggest `green' AND `nimby' AND `financial' AND `everything else' battle EVER seen in this country or more than likely the whole of Europe and/or North America!

Remind us of when T5 1st was submitted to planning and its likely completion date?

Then multiply by 2!

Add in delays and the very special `London Build Budget' (see Wembley, Olympics {already!!}, Jubilee Line, Cross-Rail, Heathrow Collapse oops sorry Express etc etc etc) and you will see this just will not happen EVER.

To be honest being a Manc and our nearest airports are all well run and funded I shouldn't give a fig about BAA but it would be a crying shame to see the Golden Goose on London air transport turned into a right fugg by the sheer stupidity and folly of their plans.

Monkey et al..... SMELL THE COFFEEEEEEEEEAlthough I think Stansted should be the priority, in the end a third runway is likely.

As noted quite a few times earlier - and you seem to have neglected to remember - is that planning decisions are changing rapidly compared to the T5 situation. I was reading in my local paper (what with living next door to London Stansted) and expansion to 50mppa isn't just a proposal, its going to become a reality within the next few years. Latest growth saw Stansted grow at over 11%.

And other countries haven't had cost-overruns? Wembley is down to the constructor failing to carry out its job and for that it is making a £200mn loss on the stadium - it could cripple the Australian construction giant and has already ruined its reputation. The Jubilee Line although expensive was well worth it - by far the most spectacular individualistic modern metro station collection in Europe and perhaps the world. Crossrail is a project that shouldn't be rushed - its implications are critical to the entire UK economy, if we rush it and build it and then fail to recognise growth areas we'll end up with a white elephant. Again however Crossrail will have Jubilee Line Extension like stations - massive, very impressive and jaw dropping. The collapse of a section of the Heathrow Express was unfortunate, but its run fine ever since and is one of the most successful express railway services in the world. Paris doesn't even have one, neither does Frankfurt, Madrid or Amsterdam I do believe (when London has three).

I'm perplexed however why you even mention the Olympics considering any cost changes are due to currency re-evaluations and the addition of more facilities.

Instead I could point to T5 on-budget and on-time. CTRL on-budget and on-time. Emirates Stadium on-budget and on-time. DLR Extensions: on-budget and on-time. There are far more positives than there are negatives to construction in London. Oh and I didn't even get to start about the multitude of skyscrapers built....

I think it is you who ought to smell the coffee, London Stansted beat Manchester and you're bitter about it.




And all that for what? In the end, Heathrow will find itself:
• With a 2 ½ runways in 2020 while CDG, Schipol or Frankfurt had already 4 by 2005, just capable of coping with traffic growth for…a couple of years, when, again congested, people will realize that this time, there is nothing left to expand…
• A useless capacity extension in a congested environment, as there is no free space anyway around Heathrow for expanding businesses, logistics warehouses or office space.
• A crazy bill. Seen the inflation mentioned above and all the exceptional works needed, I expect a final price tag between $10 and 15 Billion.And what would be wrong with 2.5 runways? As long as there is a high efficiency (like there is) at utilitising the runways then its fine with me.

4 runways is an excessive waste of land, a waste of money because they won't ever be fully utilised for a good few years (meaning they'd probably need resurfacing). The main problem at Heathrow as you like TheFly conveniently forget is not the runways, but the actual terminal capacity. Hence T5 and Heathrow East (which although claimed won't create more capacity will free up land which will boost capacity - ie a re-built mega T3).

The price tag could indeed be very high, but because of the smaller maintenance, higher efficiency, premium charged for using the largest international airport and the ability to connect into the worlds largest air hub and cost really isn't much of a concern.




They pretend it's so good to have all these airlines to fly with, but a future consolidation is inevitable in the European sky sooner or later, and some airlines may be a prey of choice.Well I suspect BA to come out tops then considering its strong position. Afterall its not how many passengers you carry, its how much money you make per passenger. You could be carrying a billion passengers and be bankrupt by the end of the week.

Its a bit like the Tesco - Carrefour situation, Tesco is simply the far more efficient retailer and infact there were rumours of Tesco buying up Carrefour - imagine the protectionist outrage at that! :laugh:

Of course I understand that the SE of England is much more populated than France and that obviously makes the planning of train lines, motorways or airports more difficult. But Japan proved it possible to implement high speed lines in a highly dense country. But I think that the 10 years delay to open the CTRL line was more due to political will than to population over density in the Kent area. The over density of a country must therefore be even more controlled and monitored by a central body capable of defining the "great lines" for the next half century. What the UK needs is more decisionary bodies with long term vision.Japan is a completely different country with different planning guidelines that ensures a say is said. I don't think people were compensated for example when they built the Shinkansen lines....and you know what - they accepted it as part of the greater good. You'd never be able to do that here.

The CTRL wasn't delayed, it was the routing which was far more complicated - hence the two 19km tunnels under London and about 25% of the entire route being in tunnels.




It is certainly feasible, and considering the cost of new runways it will make a lot of economic sense at some point. AF in that repects intends to connect both Amsterdam and Roissy with an airline shuttle every 30 mins. So there is no reason why two London airports could not be connected by a high speed train or maglev system. After all, all of them are on a motorway branch of the M25, so the track could just follow the M25 and then the motorway from the M25. Note the Airtrack connection for Heathrow T5 with Reading and Waterloo will allready do exactly that.

However, ultimately the question remains whether the hub model will become more or less important. Both at CDG and LHR, the transfer passengers as a percentage of overall passengers have remained constant at about 30 - 35% for the last 5 years. Passengers hate to connect, it is that simple.

The following shows you the number of transfers at the four main European airports. Over the last five years, Frankfurt remained in pole position, followed by LHR. Despite what LeGrandArc is pretending here, it is interesting to note that CDG has been making least progress.

Airport 2000 2004
FRA 24 27
LHR 19 23
AMS 17 19
CDG 17 17

Anyway, LHR can up its capacity to 120 mio passengers a year by building a third runway and a sixth terminal. In addition, once it is clear it can build T6 and R3 it has decided it will install a people mover system between all terminals to make transfer easier.

For LHR's latest masterplan: http://www.baa.co.uk/assets/B2CPort...mMasterPlan.pdfWhile there are already several coach and bus networks connecting the airports and London Luton and London Gatwick are connected by the same railway line (Thameslink), I don't believe that there would be enough passengers to connect between the stations. Crossrail will connect London Heathrow and London City

I do believe however that Crossrail 1, 2 & 3 would go a long way to solving many of these problems (Tottenham Court Road for instance would become not only a mega interchange, but an important airport connector if people need to connect). An outer circle line (ie the ELLE, WLL, NLL, etc which is gradually being stuck together at this moment) and a massive outer circle connecting Reading to Oxford to Milton Keynes to Bedford, Cambridge, Stansted, etc....

The people mover you talk about will also be a world first (I believe Dubai have started to build one at their airport), while Airtrack is progressing pretty well. Afterall that 6 platform Terminal 5 station will have to be used for something! :laugh:

There won't be 2.5 runways at Heathrow. There will be 3 runways. One may be shorter than the other but then two of CDG's runways are shorter too.

And Heathrow East is obviously designed to be expandable. That's why the roof height looks so low. They will probably build it so that they can add another floor in case they get permission for the 3rd runway. From the plans it also looks like they are deliberately leaving room for a possible future expansion to the north. :)

Paris aviation is so uncompetitive compared to London's. EasyJet have long complained that the Paris airport authorities always new gave slots to Air France rather than "Anglo-Saxon" EasyJet. This was especially true after France's only home grown low cost airline, Air Liberte, went out of business a few years ago (another victim of Air France's overly cosy relationship with the government).

There is no French equivalent of BA's long-haul competitor, the superb Virgin Atlantic, nor any significant precense for any of Europe's low cost airlines in Paris. Ryanair and EasyJet, both based primarily in London, are the two fastest growing airlines in the world in terms of total passenger numbers. Parisian consumers are being denied the choice enjoyed by Londoners.

Ryanair has dozens of bases across Europe. Every major western European country has several Ryanair bases. However they have only just now opened their first base in France - and even that is in Marseilles - safely away from competing with Air France's stranglehold on Paris.

Nor does Paris have any equivalent of the new generation of dedicated business-class only Trans-Atlantic airlines like Eos and MaxJet that operate from London Stansted (soon to be joined by SilverJet from London Luton). The latter will give London no less than four airports with Trans-Atlantic services.

Hong Kong's new long-haul and low-cost start-up, Oasis Airlines, will soon offer flights to several European cities. They will start with London Gatwick (of course.... ;) ) and then expand to Berlin, Cologne, Milan, and Oakland in California. Paris/France is conspicuous by its absense. They have no plans to fly there at all - despite Paris offering fewer flights to China than the London-Hong Kong route alone!!

Emirates, another airline that is revolutionising global aviation, operates eight flights per day to London airports but only two per day to Paris - the same number as Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow. The other rising Gulf carriers, Etihad, Qatar, and Gulf Air, also offer far less service to Paris than London and always opened their routes to Paris long after they had established themselves in London.

Of course in part these trends reflect historical links. Hong Kong and the Gulf States are all former British colonies after all. But then why are they offering flights to Germany and Italy before France? How come the low cost airlines, that have so revolutionised air travel across Europe, have so few planes based in France? How come there will soon be five London-based airlines offering Trans-Atlantic service (British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Maxjet, Eos, SilverJet) compared with only one based in Paris (Air France)?? Even with all this formidable competition British Airways manages to earn greater operating profits than Air France-KLM combined!

It seems to me that the French are, as usual, protecting their national champion at the expense of competiton and innovation in the market. That results in far less choice for the consumer and, inevitably, higher fares too. All of the new trends in aviation (eg low cost, low cost long-haul, Gulf carriers, dedicated business-class carriers etc etc....) are being led from London yet are barely represented in Paris. I believe Chirac has recently raised landing fees in France. France has now fallen behind Spain as well as Britain and Germany for total air traffic. London airports alone handle more than the whole of France. Until France's aviation policies change then I don't see how Paris aviation has a hope in hell of catching London's.

and finally London's role as the EU's premier "city of opportunity" for Europe's (and the world's....) young and ambitious - an advantage owed to London speaking English and being more culturally open to foreigners than Paris.

That's why I am here !

And that's also what a lot of fellow countrymen of LeGrandArc are living here... 270,000 by now and counting... give it another few years and London will be the second French city.

From the BBC, Monday 31st of July
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5048428.stm


French youth seek jobs in Britain
By Clare Davidson
Business reporter, BBC News, Chelsea



Fanny is bringing good food to the British
Packing up her organic yoghurt stall at a farmer's market in Chelsea, Fanny Lehideux, 26, is excited by the opportunities on offer in this country.

"In London you feel you can do anything - whether learning how to salsa, or starting a company," she says.

Fanny is one of many French graduates who have crossed the channel to live in the UK.

Like others, she had only planned to come for a while, but ended up staying.

It may be hard to fathom why someone would leave a country with better food, more reliable transport, longer lunch breaks, and more generous social security.

But the answer is simple: most have come to find work.

Bureaucratic burdens

Fanny runs the British arm of Natoora, an organic food delivery service focusing on French food, from goat's cheese and saucisson, to seasonal fruit and vegetables.


Despite having no business experience, starting a firm in the UK was easy, says Fanny, whose firm is branching out to offer British food as well.

Doing the same in France would be impossible, or at best a bureaucratic headache, she adds.

Entrepreneurial spirits

It is this sense of opportunity that attracts French 20 and 30-somethings to Britain.


The one thing I really miss is good cheese

Guillaume Rigal, London Business School alumnus

Many of them are dispirited with the way things are done in France.

US President George W Bush reportedly said that "the problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur".

And although that remark caused much annoyance and sparked widespread derision, many agree with the underlying sentiment.

Earlier this year, French Finance Minister Thierry Breton bemoaned the country's "significant lack of economic culture".

Which goes some way to explain why 15,000 move to the UK every year.

The French embassy says there are 270,000 French people living in the UK, though others say there are many more, perhaps as many as 350,000.

State enterprise

Boris Hure, who came to the UK 10 years ago and now works for an information consultancy, says business in France means "grey-haired men".

In London its about what you can do, not what you have done

Paskell Etesse, software analyst, Reuters

"I left because I could not stand [the view] that business means taking over daddy's firm."

One explanation for this is the education system, which is often criticised for being highly elitist and inflexible.

Top students go to the Grandes Ecoles - professional universities in a different league to the standard universities.

These high flying-students are academically well-educated, but they are not entrepreneurial, according to Guillaume Rigal, who left France to study for a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at London Business School.

"The best brains in France end up working for the state" he says.

Rigid market

Unlike in Anglo-Saxon countries, many in France remain sceptical of unfettered capitalism and French businesses sometimes remain closely intertwined with the state.

More than one in five of France's 18 to 25-year-olds are unemployed, twice the national average.

"Even a bar job in France requires a CV and covering letter," says Boris, who blames France's rigid labour market, where few ever leave once they have landed a permanent job.

French graduates in Britain, meanwhile, say it is easy to find work in the UK.


The problem [for young people] in France is not about the law but the mentality

Agnes-Prune Sene, Betsson

"The only skills that count are those that have an associated qualification on paper - not experience," says French teacher Magali Kerbellec, 36, who followed a boyfriend to London, but stayed after they split.

Reuters software engineer Paskell Etesse agrees and points out that it is easier to switch jobs in the UK.

"In London, it is about what you can do, not what you have done," he says.

French myth?

Job security is often deemed a sacred part of French life, yet this perception might be based on myth.

French workers say short-term contracts, which offer no job security at all, are the norm for the young in France.

It was this unpredictability that finally prompted Agnes-Prune Sene, 29, to quit Paris after having signed 39 short-term contracts in three years.

"The problem in France is not about the law but the mentality," she says.

The resulting uncertainty makes it hard to rent a flat or open a bank account.

Better pay

But not all is glorious in the UK either.


London is more open to foreigners than Paris, says Agnes-Prune

Getting a job might be easier, but starting salaries are often low.

Fanny used to make £800 per month in her first job as a receptionist at London's Le Pont de la Tour restaurant. Agnes-Prune earns £14,000 at Swedish gambling company Betsson.

Nevertheless, to many French in Britain it is the ease of getting work and progressing fast that counts.

Paskell, who earns more than £30,000, and Boris, who gets paid more than £50,000, insist that London's high prices are compensated for by opportunities for higher salaries.

Going back

Having extolled London's virtues for an hour, Fanny insist that "France is still my home" and adds that she will probably go back there one day.

Reservations about staying in the UK are common.

In France, family provisions in particular, from nurseries to subsidised travel, far exceed what is on offer in the UK.

What the UK offers in job opportunities, France makes up for in public services, the French say.

Many of them also long for French food.

"The one thing I really miss is good cheese," says Guillame.

.
They need to grow LHR to the max whilst they are building out STN. And there is no reason they could not turn LHR and STN in one single airport, by connecting them by maglev. If it takes you 20 mins between LHR and STN, they basically become terminals of the same ariport. Anyway that will take another 20 years until that is needed. By that time the Chinese will be manufacturing the maglev and it will be more affordable.



.
LaGrandArc, I was not talking about a external system but and internal system (i.e. before passport control and with check-in of luggage to final destination). It would be a relatively straightforward system follwing the M25 and then the M11 in the case of Stansted , the M23 in the case of Gatwick or the M1 in the case of Luton. The longest distance from HRW is Stansted, at about 90 kms, so I will take that as an example. Assuming that line would run T6 - T123 - T5 at LHR, you have to add 10 km, which brings the total distance to 100 kms. With a Maglev system that would take you about 20 mins for T6 and 15 mins for T5 to stansted. By having that system before passport control and it also transporting the luggage in cargo. it would basically turn Heathrow and Stansted into one single airport. And people would like to transfer just for the Maglev experience. Anyway, that's for in 20 to 30 years' time unless Monkey becomes PM.


The Chinese are not likely to make construction, labor and land costs in the UK cheaper anytime soon.

Could a maglev really follow a motorway's curve? I know tgv lines need high radiuses and higher the speed, straighter the line. In France (and in Kent?), hs lines run parallel to motorways, but it's ok because the number of interchanges is low. The M25 and its myriad of exits would seriously complicate the layout and construction. I assume that on the majority of that route the maglev couldn't run at full speed, say 500 kmph, so what would be the advantage compared to a conventional high speed train?
Wouldn't a Heathrow-Luton line easier to integrate in the environment? It could therefore continue north to Birm and Manchester and create a real hs north-south spine?
But the thing is, now that you have spent decades on building a high speed train stretch (the TGV line between Kin's Cross and the Tunnel), why not try to do something useful of it, directly link it to other existing lines for instance, or a new Stratford-Birmingham-Manchester hs line, instead of introducing a brand new infrastructure that will connect to nothing?

For the next future, the fashionable inter airport hub won't be LHR-STD, but the CDG-Le Bourget hub distant of 9 km, combining general public aviation and private business jet services.

.

With regards to the TGV connection to CDG, I have been using it both from the North and West. From Brussels it is pretty good if you take the train that bypasses Lille. The problem is that these trains are very infrequent. With regards to the West, I took it from Rennes, and I must say the loop around Paris takes an awful lot of time (why ddoes it go so slow on the east?) and again the trains are infrequent. I think it is a very good idea if AF runs its own TGVs!


This is the line I was talking to Samsonyuen, you call it the West line, I call it the south line. In fact it is the horizontal West-East stretch in the south of Paris linking Western tgv lines (Britanny and Bordeaux) to the already existing North-south stretch linking TGV Nord and Méditerranée. (http://lgv2030.free.fr/cartefra.htm Paris card at the bottom of the page)

That is the reason why your loop in south Paris was so long. Because this dedicated hs line does not exist yet, you actually travelled with the TGV on the RER line (and this not only affects the TGV speed but also the RER functioning). The line will be made, but the timetable is not yet defined. Other people are also defending the CDG-La Défense-Normandie hs line.

.
With regards to the connection of CDG to central Paris I think there is a lot of scope for improvement. I used the RER connection to get to Montparnasse. My god!!! I arrived on Lufthansa in terminal 1 which was dirtier than I have ever seen a Heathrow terminal. Then I had to wait for 15 mins for the bus (why are these shuttles so infrequent????) to take me to the station. Because the signalisation on the bus was not clear I asked the driver in fluent French whether indeed it was going to the station..., what an arrogance! Then I had to wait for the RER - about 10 mins - that was OK. I took the RER to Denfer or wahtever it is called (to me it was d'enfer!); it was late and it stopped everywhere. The RER was like three quarters of an hour. And then I had to take the metro, which was fine and efficient. The whole thing took me close to two hours.

So 1 vs 2 hours, LaGrandArc, there is still a lot of work!



to me it was d'enfer!);




I cannot do other than agree about the RER B link, largely inefficient. Heathrow Express is a real success. CDG will have its own CDG Express in 2010. We'll just have to wait a bit.


Fortunately, all this work you say is needed is actually under construction:

- No more unpleasant driver and bus as transfer from one terminal to another will be served by a new private automated METRO LINE, CDG VAL serving all terminals and parkways in 8 minutes by Autumn 2006. (A second line in project)

-Terminal 1 will be completely refurbished by 2008 (1/2 already done) and you will be able to admire its fabulous 70's Star Trek architecture and new signalling system, at the same time as T2E reopens (rebuilt to the identical, except that the faulty concrete will be replaced by a steel structure), and that new terminal S3 is also opened to the public. By 2008, all CDG will be completely refurbished.

In 2009, with CDGVAL, CDG Express, all 5 terminals refurbished or brand new, the exceptional, emerging public-private aviation dual hub with the neighbouring Le Bourget airport, fast-growing logistics, tech and business parks (RoissyPôle, RoissyTech, Flexitech, Fedex hub), a unique aviation engineering and maintenance concentration (Dassault Falcon EADS Airbus Thalès), the world's most frequented exhibition halls nearby, and of course with the greatest number of flights, destinations, connections and passengers amongst European airports, CDG will be Europe's world class airport and a unique asset for Paris.

Go and have a look at the Le Bourget airport brochure (in English)
http://www.ccip93.ccip.fr/upload/pdf/developpement/Plaquette%20Le%20Bourget.pdf

Paris Le Bourget business aviation airport, premier in Europe in terms of passengers and private flights, is ideally located between Paris (8 km) and CDG (10 km). Businessmen can therefore fly to Le Bourget with their private aircraft, take a limousine and catch a long haul "public" flight within minutes at CDG. The busy guy can also jump from his jet onto an helicopter to central Paris at the héliport near the Bois de Boulogne. With its Musée de L'Air et de l'Espace, its 3 runways, the Dassault, Falcon, Airbus, Thalès maintenance centres around, its own parc des expositions and the huge Parc des Expositions Paris Nord-Villepinte nearby, its Paris Air Show, (300000 visitors, 1850 exhibitors, supposedly the largest airshow in the world), Le Bourget will play an increasing part in the future of aviation and business in Paris and in Europe. This will also give CDG another decisive advantage over its European competitors. No wonder that Jean-Cyril Spinetta declares the CDG - Le Bourget collaboration to develop this unique public-private hub a priority in his speech in Amsterdam in May 2006.

That's why I am here !

And that's also what a lot of fellow countrymen of LeGrandArc are living here... 270,000 by now and counting... give it another few years and London will be the second French city.



Yes, for me also London liked like heaven for a few years. Then I realised that while British GDP had catched up with the French GDP, the cost of living in London was 50% higher than in Paris. I may be stupid but I'm not dumb. So I flew back. :cool:

[B]That's why I am here!Where are you from originally JGG?

The Chinese are not likely to make construction, labor and land costs in the UK cheaper anytime soon.The Shanghai Maglev is actually built by a German company, Transrapid, and they have recently run into problems with the Chinese stealing their technolgy. I'm sure they would be relieved to win a contract from a reliable western contrator instead.Could a maglev really follow a motorway's curve? I know tgv lines need high radiuses and higher the speed, straighter the line. In France (and in Kent?), hs lines run parallel to motorways, but it's ok because the number of interchanges is low. The M25 and its myriad of exits would seriously complicate the layout and construction. I assume that on the majority of that route the maglev couldn't run at full speed, say 500 kmph, so what would be the advantage compared to a conventional high speed train?I personally don't think they will build a Maglev around London. However Maglev can actually turn on a far tighter radius than HSR even when it's operating at a faster speed simply because the tracks can be tilted to a much greater extent than HSR railway tracks. Of course when you build tilted tracks you have to assume that the vehicle will always be moving at a given speed. However that too is possible with Maglev to a greater extent than even dedicated HSR lines. And, because Maglev runs on stilts raised above ground, it will be no problem to leap over the many interchanges along the M25. See in Shanghai:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/ph-17698.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity2.jpg

I do not know which plans GRUPO FERROVIAL has for London Airport (Heathrow); FERROVIAL has now become the biggest airport operator in the world with aquisitions all over the world; I suppose they will invest on it on new infrastructures; Heathrow airport is the biggest in Europe, as far as we know in Spain, and it is the FERROVIAL's Golden Crown...sure I am about this.

Where are you from originally JGG?
I am from Belgium and I left that country almost 20 years ago. There are about 15,000 Belgians in the London area.

We like it here, for all the reasons you gave.

In addition, there is an "older contingent" of Belgians and their descendants still living in the UK as a result of the second and first world wars. It was not just the government that came over here, but large scores of Belgians, workers, teachers, etc. Also, the UK it is about the single country in Europe that has never attacked Belgium (other than liberating it quite a few times from the Germans and French). Our royal families are also closely connected throuth Prince Albert, in fact it was Leopold I of Belgium who arranged that marriage.

Go and have a look at the Le Bourget airport brochure (in English)
http://www.ccip93.ccip.fr/upload/pdf/developpement/Plaquette%20Le%20Bourget.pdf

Paris Le Bourget business aviation airport, premier in Europe in terms of passengers and private flights, is ideally located between Paris (8 km) and CDG (10 km). Businessmen can therefore fly to Le Bourget with their private aircraft, take a limousine and catch a long haul "public" flight within minutes at CDG. The busy guy can also jump from his jet onto an helicopter to central Paris at the héliport near the Bois de Boulogne. With its Musée de L'Air et de l'Espace, its 3 runways, the Dassault, Falcon, Airbus, Thalès maintenance centres around, its own parc des expositions and the huge Parc des Expositions Paris Nord-Villepinte nearby, its Paris Air Show, (300000 visitors, 1850 exhibitors, supposedly the largest airshow in the world), Le Bourget will play an increasing part in the future of aviation and business in Paris and in Europe. This will also give CDG another decisive advantage over its European competitors. No wonder that Jean-Cyril Spinetta declares the CDG - Le Bourget collaboration to develop this unique public-private hub a priority in his speech in Amsterdam in May 2006.And yet it carried only 0.1mppa. That might be handy for a few, but already catters to that niche market and specific business-only carriers within the same airport. So you could be in a meeting in Frankfurt, go back to London Stansted and take the flight to New York in a plane that is only occupied by other businessmen and women.

Also I think you'll find the Farnborough Air Show (just south-west of London) to be larger - not only by number of trade visitors and members of the public, but the amount of deals made, product launches and the number of jets on sight.




As for maglev, I'd prefer to have connections on from London St Pancras to the rest of the UK - maglev is far more flexible, offers far higher speeds and easier construction and far greater frequencies and carrying capacity that will overhaul British transport.



As for GDP - Britain has since overtook and left behind France, but I'm not sure about the 50% difference - is there a stat behind that figure?

The Shanghai Maglev is actually built by a German company, Transrapid, and they have recently run into problems with the Chinese stealing their technolgy. I'm sure they would be relieved to win a contract from a reliable western contrator instead.I personally don't think they will build a Maglev around London. However Maglev can actually turn on a far tighter radius than HSR even when it's operating at a faster speed simply because the tracks can be tilted to a much greater extent than HSR railway tracks. Of course when you build tilted tracks you have to assume that the vehicle will always be moving at a given speed. However that too is possible with Maglev to a greater extent than even dedicated HSR lines. And, because Maglev runs on stilts raised above ground, it will be no problem to leap over the many interchanges along the M25. See in Shanghai:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/ph-17698.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/Shanghai/Shanghaicity2.jpg

Imagine that motorway on the picture was the M25.

I think schemes like Crossrail and Thameslink will only help partially. Yes, it will become more efficient to tranfer between airports but you will still have to check out and check in you luggage. It will still take you over an hour to transfer between airports.... LHR - Farringdon 30 mins and from there, including waiting time about 45 mins to Luton or Gatwick. LHR - Liverpool Street 35 mins and from there, including waiting time, about 60 mins to Stansted. The tranfer may become possible, but only for the brave and you'll have to allow for about 3 hours between arrival and departure.

If they constructed a Maglev "before passport control" between Stansted and LHR that would basically turn these two airports into one giant single airport. Do you know how much this Shangai scheme cost?

.
In 2009, with CDGVAL, CDG Express, all 5 terminals refurbished or brand new, the exceptional, emerging public-private aviation dual hub with the neighbouring Le Bourget airport, fast-growing logistics, tech and business parks (RoissyPôle, RoissyTech, Flexitech, Fedex hub), a unique aviation engineering and maintenance concentration (Dassault Falcon EADS Airbus Thalès), the world's most frequented exhibition halls nearby, and of course with the greatest number of flights, destinations, connections and passengers amongst European airports, CDG will be Europe's world class airport and a unique asset for Paris.

All this nice infrastructure will certainly help when it is built, but the key aspect which is missing is a liberalisation of the French air travel market. And other cities continue to upgrade their infrstructure as well, in different cycles.

France could be economically as successful as the UK if it liberalised and deregulated its markets. No matter how much infrastructure France builds, if it does not deregulate and liberalises it will have to continue to live with one of the highest unemployment rates and one of the lowest GDP growth rates in the developed world.

And yet it carried only 0.1mppa. That might be handy for a few, but already catters to that niche market and specific business-only carriers within the same airport. So you could be in a meeting in Frankfurt, go back to London Stansted and take the flight to New York in a plane that is only occupied by other businessmen and women.

Anyway, the City Airport is much more successful than Bourget. A 20 mins DLR ride away from Bank, you can't beat that. On top of that you have Northolt and another 6 small airports that take business flights and I know of at least 2 heliports in central London...

As for maglev, I'd prefer to have connections on from London St Pancras to the rest of the UK - maglev is far more flexible, offers far higher speeds and easier construction and far greater frequencies and carrying capacity that will overhaul British transport..

I think that whatever HS line gets build, it is important it runs through an airport. Or it could start in an Airport, like LHR - St Pancrass / King's Cross and then up North.

As for GDP - Britain has since overtook and left behind France, but I'm not sure about the 50% difference - is there a stat behind that figure?

Anyway, whether it is 20% or 50%, it does not matter at all. It is more expensive to live in London but you also earn more. Just like it is more expensive to live in Paris than Sao Paulo, but you'all also earn more in Paris.

Anyway, the City Airport is much more successful than Bourget. A 20 mins DLR ride away from Bank, you can't beat that. On top of that you have Northolt and another 6 small airports that take business flights and I know of at least 2 heliports in central London...

I think that whatever HS line gets build, it is important it runs through an airport. Or it could start in an Airport, like LHR - St Pancrass / King's Cross and then up North.

Anyway, whether it is 20% or 50%, it does not matter at all. It is more expensive to live in London but you also earn more. Just like it is more expensive to live in Paris than Sao Paulo, but you'all also earn more in Paris.Indeed London City and the multitude of other small aircraft airport has no match in Paris.

I'm unsure if you've been around when I've been posting my maglev projects over the years here at SSC, but I'm probably the largest supporter on the forums for such a network. A Central London station in my mind is a massive requirement - possibly Tottenham Court Road. Another one at major termini and then another at say London Heathrow before going up north or on some other route.

I am from Belgium and I left that country almost 20 years ago. There are about 15,000 Belgians in the London area.

We like it here, for all the reasons you gave.

In addition, there is an "older contingent" of Belgians and their descendants still living in the UK as a result of the second and first world wars. It was not just the government that came over here, but large scores of Belgians, workers, teachers, etc. Also, the UK it is about the single country in Europe that has never attacked Belgium (other than liberating it quite a few times from the Germans and French). Our royal families are also closely connected throuth Prince Albert, in fact it was Leopold I of Belgium who arranged that marriage.20 years! You've been here longer than many of the UK-born forumers have been alive. :)

Heathrow has better transport connections than CDG even accounting for the TGV. Heathrow has the Tube (cheap and convenient) and the very fast Heathrow Express (15 minutes to central London every 15 minutes). Paris has no line to central Paris as fast as the Heathrow Express. There is also a widened section of the M25 that is 12 lanes across and the neaby M3 and M4 bringing in people from the west and north. And sorry GrandArc but I don't find the outer Paris orbital all that good. It's really a string of different motorways stitched together. You have to change lanes all the time to stay on the orbital route. And the inner ring road, the Peripherique, seems to be permenantly jammed.

However it's not the transport connections that make Heathrow more popular - it's the fact that more people want to move in and out of London. It's because Britons travel more, the London/SE metro region has a larger population than the Ile de France, and because London is more of a world city than Paris. London/Britain has cultural and historic links to a much larger and more populous former colonial empire, and there's also the close economic, cultural, and political relationship to the US and other English speaking countries, and finally as the EU's premier "city of opportunity" for Europe's (and the world's....) young and ambitious - an advantage owed to London speaking English and being more culturally open to foreigners than Paris.


The Paris périphérique is only jammed from 5 in the morning to 10 at night!
Of course, the London inner périphérique is not jammed, there's none!



More a world city than Paris? While I agree the former British Empire is more populous, there are plenty of domains where Paris is far more global than London (in numbers of office space size, Fortune 500 headquarters, international institutions, international fairgrounds and conferences, research centres, infrastructure, tourist attractions and cultural events, and more…While London may lead in other domains.

So if you want to start on that subject, open a new thread and sharpen your arguments, I will sharpen mine.

It seems to me that the French are, as usual, protecting their national champion at the expense of competiton and innovation in the market. That results in far less choice for the consumer and, inevitably, higher fares too. All of the new trends in aviation (eg low cost, low cost long-haul, Gulf carriers, dedicated business-class carriers etc etc....) are being led from London yet are barely represented in Paris. I believe Chirac has recently raised landing fees in France. France has now fallen behind Spain as well as Britain and Germany for total air traffic. London airports alone handle more than the whole of France. Until France's aviation policies change then I don't see how Paris aviation has a hope in hell of catching London's.


Lol. AF is a cheater and BA a saint.
Chirac has yes raised a tax for aid to poor countries, one of his less detestable actions.
UK's (and Spain's) high passenger numbers are due to exterior factors already exposed (they are an island or a peninsula, are geographically off-centre in Europe, flock or receive millions of people for holidays, and the UK has no high speed network) .
Toulouse and Paris aerospace research, engineering and maintenance complexes crush London's ones.

France could be economically as successful as the UK if it liberalised and deregulated its markets. No matter how much infrastructure France builds, if it does not deregulate and liberalises it will have to continue to live with one of the highest unemployment rates and one of the lowest GDP growth rates in the developed world.


Anyway, the City Airport is much more successful than Bourget. A 20 mins DLR ride away from Bank, you can't beat that. On top of that you have Northolt and another 6 small airports that take business flights and I know of at least 2 heliports in central London...




Don't worry for the French economy. Maybe you ignore that every year, 2 Million square meters of office space are brought to the market compared to only 1 for London? ((1.3 incl. Thames Valley and Cam Fen) or that France equals UK for the number of FDI (Foreign direct investments: UK loses share of foreign direct investors, the Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5-2215752,00.html) when actually the UK sees (again) its market share decline, which means, that far from what you assert, France is as economically attractive as the UK for foreigners although its much more regulated.
If you want to have a look at the actual legacy in household debt and housing prices spiralling out of control of the "Labour" party and its maestro Gordon Brown, go and consult these articles: Who's to blame for Britain's soaring household debt? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=P30&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2006/08/03/ubizview03.xml)

I maintain and persist that may the British GDP have catched up with the French, the cost of living in London remains much higher than in Paris. 50% ? In that case, where are the good news for Londoners? Statistics wanted!


The thing is, I don't understand why you cannot help changing subjects and trying to attack me on other fronts (on Economics, or by posting an article concerning French expatriates). The thread of the post is Heathrow. Are you so short of arguments that you have to evade and hedge?


Concerning the City/Bourget airports conversation, no need to try to turn all the arguments in any order that you want, you will have the last word only with bad faith. There is not in London a single private aviation airport capable of rivalling with Le Bourget and its unique public-private hub with CDG. In addition, Le Bourget has its own jet and private aircraft maintenance and research centres, its own exhibition halls, museum and air show. The City airport (nor any private jet airport in London) doesn't have any of that. Full stop.


I already said that I appreciated your arguments as long as they are not biased. Otherwise I will not carry on participating with you to sterile debates with no correct or relevant information, data or arguments exchanged, as with Nick Taylor for instance.
As I already said to Monkey, if you want to talk economics, open a new thread and sharpen your arguments, I will sharpen mine.

The Paris périphérique is only jammed from 5 in the morning to 10 at night!
Of course, the London inner périphérique is not jammed, there's none!

More a world city than Paris? While I agree the former British Empire is more populous, there are plenty of domains where Paris is far more global than London (in numbers of office space size, Fortune 500 headquarters, international institutions, international fairgrounds and conferences, research centres, infrastructure, tourist attractions and cultural events, and more…While London may lead in other domains.

So if you want to start on that subject, open a new thread and sharpen your arguments, I will sharpen mine.

Lol. AF is a cheater and BA a saint.
Chirac has yes raised a tax for aid to poor countries, one of his less detestable actions.
UK's (and Spain's) high passenger numbers are due to exterior factors already exposed (they are an island or a peninsula, are geographically off-centre in Europe, flock or receive millions of people for holidays, and the UK has no high speed network) .
Toulouse and Paris aerospace research, engineering and maintenance complexes crush London's ones.

Don't worry for the French economy. Maybe you ignore that every year, 2 Million square meters of office space are brought to the market compared to only 1 for London? ((1.3 incl. Thames Valley and Cam Fen) or that France equals UK for the number of FDI (Foreign direct investments: UK loses share of foreign direct investors, the Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...2215752,00.html) when actually the UK sees (again) its market share decline, which means, that far from what you assert, France is as economically attractive as the UK for foreigners although its much more regulated.
If you want to have a look at the actual legacy in household debt and housing prices spiralling out of control of the "Labour" party and its maestro Gordon Brown, go and consult these articles: Who's to blame for Britain's soaring household debt? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai.../ubizview03.xml)

I maintain and persist that may the British GDP have catched up with the French, the cost of living in London remains much higher than in Paris. 50% ? In that case, where are the good news for Londoners? Statistics wanted!

The thing is, I don't understand why you cannot help changing subjects and trying to attack me on other fronts (on Economics, or by posting an article concerning French expatriates). The thread of the post is Heathrow. Are you so short of arguments that you have to evade and hedge?

Concerning the City/Bourget airports conversation, no need to try to turn all the arguments in any order that you want, you will have the last word only with bad faith. There is not in London a single private aviation airport capable of rivalling with Le Bourget and its unique public-private hub with CDG. In addition, Le Bourget has its own jet and private aircraft maintenance and research centres, its own exhibition halls, museum and air show. The City airport (nor any private jet airport in London) doesn't have any of that. Full stop.

I already said that I appreciated your arguments as long as they are not biased. Otherwise I will not carry on participating with you to sterile debates with no correct or relevant information, data or arguments exchanged, as with Nick Taylor for instance.
As I already said to Monkey, if you want to talk economics, open a new thread and sharpen your arguments, I will sharpen mine.[/QUOTE]WEll thank god its only jammed during sunlight hours! :laugh:

London needs no périphérique, it would ruin vast tracts of intricate and colourful urban areas.

If you're looking for research, may I suggest the Oxford-Cambridge Arc - within the London metro area it is by far the largest R&D belt in Europe. Not suprising considering it links between the two highest ranked universities in Europe and is equidistant to London as the core of business.

Why raise a tax for the poor? The worst crime against the poor around the world is the CAP and guess who the biggest recipient is - France of course! If France really wanted to help the poor it would agree to Britains demands to cut the CAP, but thats an anglo-saxon idea - we can never be right about something! :laugh:

Yet while the UK has no HSR, its intercity rail-network carries as many people as Frances intercity rail network....the difference is that although French TGV is faster, the distances between UK cities are shorter - hence the similar passenger numbers. If Britain had (and it intends to build) a HSR/maglev network I would bet that the number of passengers travelling between cities in Britain would double and end up far higher than the TGV network carries simply because Britain is far denser.

And it is because of those French aviation centres that the A380 is delayed!

But what does Paris building more office space and that France is attracting as much FDI show us? It shows that France and Paris are failing, because the French economy is growing at 1.5% and Britain at 2.6%. What better way to show the efficiency of the British economy in relation to the exhausted French one.

The only people responsible for rising debts are those that take the debt on. Its a fact that people in Britain want a house, rather than most countries on the continent where renting is the norm. Fact is, I see no problem with the current situation because ironically the finance company I work with is connected to the world of debt and the money will just keep on circulating within the British economy. More people will default, but the economy and general population wil be better off; and the figures prove this.

I don't think you get it - Britain a few years back overtook France and its accelerating away. Yes I want a figure for that 50% - I don't believe that its that much.

Well surely if Le Bourget was so great and successful what with it being nextdoor to Charles de Gaulle, don't you think it would be more successful than the low 130,000 people it handles each year. Infact it only highlights the pathetic state of the Parisian air hub - that such an airport still fails to attract many passengers while London City Airport which until recently didn't even have a direct rail link to Central London handles over 2mn. And why would London City want any of that when its an airport, not a tourist attraction or business centre - if I wanted that I'd go to ExCeL or Farnborough. Maybe thats the deep-lying reason why London City handled (June 2005-May 2006) 2,134,000 - 16.4x more thanle Bourget. Speaks for itself really.

Your arguments are blunt and are clearly aimed at boosting Paris over London despite everything pointing in the opposite direction.

The thing is, I don't understand why you cannot help changing subjects and trying to attack me on other fronts (on Economics, or by posting an article concerning French expatriates). The thread of the post is Heathrow. Are you so short of arguments that you have to evade and hedge?

No, It have already provided you with all arguments:

- The London aviation market (by number of passengers) is almost twice as big as Paris'.

- From '95 - '05 the London aviation market has grown by 61% versus 41% for Paris.

- The UK airline fleet is almost twice the French fleet. The UK provides a much wider choice of domestic airlines and is a dominant force in the budget airline sector.

- London still has a larger number of transfer passengers than Paris, in fact, London has been increasing its lead on Paris over the last 4 years.

- The connection from CDG to the centre of Paris is bad, which you acknowledge.

With regards to the future:

- CDG gets its new terminal 2E, a new high speed connection to central Paris similar to the Hex, a VAL system that connects all its terminals and a refurbishment of terminal 1.

- ORL gets better connections to public transport. Le Bourget continues to expand.

- LHR gets is new terminal 5, is planning a replacement of terminal 1 & 2 and a futher rail connection, airtrack (both of which are uncontroversial), is pushing for mixed use on R1 & R2, a third rundway, sixth terminal and people connector system. The third runway, mixed use and sixth terminal are controversial but the importance is understood.

- STN applies for another runway, LGW continues to add piers (like pier 6, 2005), LCY has a planning application in to increase its terminal and aircraft stands and SEN (London Southend) will become the sixth London airport (!!!) as it has planning consent to build a new terminal and railway station on the eastern boundary of the airport, which will provide an integrated transport interchange. It is hoped that this will be built and operational in 2008 but at the latest before the Olympics (good location vis-a-vis the Olympic Site).

So the conclusion from my perspective is fairly clear. Today, London is well ahead of Paris. Yet Paris has a number of investment plans that are quasi certain and will take particularly CDG to a new level. London has to complete T5, which will substantially improve the Heathrow experience for those why fly BA. From there on, there are a lot of plans for all London ariports but they do not have planning permission yet (except SEN and some other less important plans). So the next five years will decide where London is going. If none of these proposals happen London will lose out in the battle against Continental European airports. If most of them happen, London wil keep its leading position.

My personal concern relates to Labour because until now it has demonstrated it is very bad at taking infrastructure decisions. Most of the really controversial airport expansion (new airports like LCY and new runways like STN) has happened under the Thatcher governments, except for T5 which was decided under Labour. Also Labour produced the white paper; now the question is whether they are brave enough to push that through.

More a world city than Paris? While I agree the former British Empire is more populous, there are plenty of domains where Paris is far more global than London (in numbers of office space size, Fortune 500 headquarters, international institutions, international fairgrounds and conferences, research centres, infrastructure, tourist attractions and cultural events, and more… While London may lead in other domains.London is more of world city than Paris in every way. And even though some of the things you list are of minor importance, or even trivial, I don't even agree with those. For instance Paris does not lead London in cultural events, tourist attractions, or infrastructure.I maintain and persist that may the British GDP have catched up with the French, the cost of living in London remains much higher than in Paris. 50% ? In that case, where are the good news for Londoners? Statistics wanted!"Caught up"? Try "overtaken" - and increasing the lead avery year. And, before you whinge about Britain being more expensive, you would do well to note that Britain is richer by the PPP measure of the GDP as well.The thing is, I don't understand why you cannot help changing subjects and trying to attack me on other fronts (on Economics, or by posting an article concerning French expatriates). The thread of the post is Heathrow. Are you so short of arguments that you have to evade and hedge?We're not changing the subject. We're giving you the background reasons why London's aviation has been growing faster than Paris's and will continue to accelerate faster.Toulouse and Paris aerospace research, engineering and maintenance complexes crush London's ones.LOL! It sounds like you are trying to use Airbus's facilities in Toulouse (about as far from Paris as you can get) to win an argument against London! However even on that score you're wrong. When an Airbus aircraft uses Rolls Royce engines then it's more British-built than from any other country. Of course Rolls Royce jets are fitted to about half of most Boeing models too. I suspect the combination of BAE and Rolls Royce gives Britain a slightly larger aerospace manufacturing industry than France.Don't worry for the French economy.I don't lose any sleep on the subject. ;) However the fact remains that it has underperformed the British economy for the last two decades and continues to underperform it now.Maybe you ignore that every year, 2 Million square meters of office space are brought to the market compared to only 1 for London? ((1.3 incl. Thames Valley and Cam Fen)I find that hard to believe. There seems to be so much more construction in London than Paris.or that France equals UK for the number of FDI (Foreign direct investments: UK loses share of foreign direct investors, the Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...2215752,00.html) when actually the UK sees (again) its market share decline, which means, that far from what you assert, France is as economically attractive as the UK for foreigners although its much more regulated.France is not as attractive. This year Britain has overtaken China and, once again, become the second most popular FDI destination in the world after the United States. Britain attracts more investment than France and invests more than France too. Britain is ahead on every measure.... inward FDI, outward FDI, inward accumulated stock of FDI, and outward accumulated stock of FDI. :)

BAA to ‘defy government’ in Heathrow runway move
Dominic O’Connell



BAA’s new owners are likely to defy the government and build a new runway at Heathrow before the one planned at Stansted, according to British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh.
A consortium led by Spanish group Ferrovial bought BAA for £10.3 billion earlier this year. Before the deal, BAA had thrown its weight behind a government plan to build the first new runway in southeast England at Stansted, Essex.



But Walsh said he expected the Ferrovial consortium to take “a more pragmatic approach”. He added: “I have held that view (that Heathrow would now come before Stansted) since the takeover. In simple terms, you can make a much stronger business argument to do Heathrow first.”

This week BA called for the Office of Fair Trading, which is examining the ownership of airports, to refer BAA to the Competition Commission for a full investigation. BAA owns all three big London airports, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.

In its submission, BA said Heathrow and Stansted should not be owned by the same firm. Walsh said splitting them up would make it even more likely Heathrow would get the first new runway in the southeast.

“You would then have an owner that was interested in maximising the return from Heathrow rather than a group of airports,” he said.

Several other airlines, including Virgin Atlantic and Easyjet, last week called for BAA to be broken up. BAA said the airline’s arguments were “self- contradictory and self-defeating”. But senior sources at the company said they were resigned to a referral to the Competition Commission, but would fight any plan to break up the company.

^ What did I tell you? ;)

The sooner BAA is broken up the better. Private monopolies are worse than state ones.

BAA grounds claim of runway defiance

A CLAIM that the new owners of BAA might defy the Government and build a new runway at Heathrow before a second at Stansted has immediately been quashed.

On Sunday, British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh said he believed the Ferrovial-led consortium would take a more pragmatic approach to the business case for Heathrow over the Essex terminal.

But that idea was scotched by BAA, saying it was a non-starter. On Tuesday, a BAA spokesman said nothing had changed. After BAA was bought for £10.1bn in June by ADI, it confirmed to the Observer that it would continue with a second runway at Stansted.

The spokesman said this week that a third runway at Heathrow would have to overcome environmental issues first and that government review was not due to start until next year. Its conclusions would be after the planning application for G2 (Second Generation) had been submitted.

"In the South East, there's a shortage of airport capacity so the Government White Paper which suggests there should be a second runway as early as possible at Stansted is an extremely valuable piece of policy," he stated.

The spokesman also felt that any inquiry into BAA's monopoly ownership of Britain's main airports would not affect plans for expanding Stansted.

The Office of Fair Trading is collecting views within the industry to consider whether to refer the issue to the Competition Commission. Any such inquiry would take at least two years, he said.

BAA's new owners' review of the costings for Stansted G2 were "proceeding apace" and should be published no later than the autumn, said the spokesman. A planning application is expected to be sent to Uttlesford District Council in summer 2007.

The BAA spokesman concluded that a recent drop in passenger numbers due to the latest terrorist threat was "a blip, rather than a trend" and the travelling public were quick to recover from such shocks.

perrys@hertsessexnews.co.uk


31 August 2006

The sooner BAA is broken up the better. Private monopolies are worse than state ones.I thought you would be opposed given that any breakup would likely result in Heathrow's 3rd runway being built even faster. ;)

I thought you would be opposed given that any breakup would likely result in Heathrow's 3rd runway being built even faster. ;)It's "if" not when that concerns me. The decision is down to the Government. And in a way if it were split up there may be more incentive for another company to invest in a second runway at Stanstead or Gatwick in an attempt to entice traffic from Heathrow. Who knows, but the dominance of BAA has long seemed entirely illogical and somewhat anti-capitalist to me.

Whatever happens another option followed by inquiries, legal battles and more ammunition for every side can only delay the process another year or two.

"even faster"! Yep we all know how quickly airport strategy comes together in the UK. I don't think I can picture any quicker though. That must be like super super quick fast.

Dropped off at T2 yesterday drove out to the feeder rank on the perimeter rd spent an hour there then got sent to T3 where I picked up. It should take me no more than 10 minutes to drop off and get out of the airport and the same again to pick up and get out. It took 20 minutes for the drop off and 40 minutes for the pick up. Two wasted hours at LAP instead of 1 hr 20 mins, the place was at a standstill, the sooner thay flatten the central area the better.

BA has joined in the chorus calling for BAA's breakup - primarily in the hope of getting a 3rd runway at Heathrow all the sooner: :)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5283092.stm

Interesting article on another new airport in the London Region- sadly its for all those rich folk.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1864910,00.html

BAA submits Heathrow East Planning Application:

BAA Heathrow submits outline planning application for new terminal area16 October 2006

BAA Heathrow has submitted an outline planning application for a new terminal – ‘Heathrow East‘ - to the London Borough of Hillingdon, following a public consultation which revealed that a significant number of respondents viewed the proposal as ‘long overdue’.

The plans for Heathrow East set out the demolition of Terminal 2 and the Queen’s Building in the central area of the airport. On the same site, a single replacement terminal would be constructed to significantly improve the quality of service offered at Heathrow Airport. Terminal 1 would be closed as a passenger-processing facility once Heathrow East has become fully operational. The terminal would not increase the capacity of the airport but would replace outdated buildings.

Initial designs for Heathrow East promise a world-class facility that will provide passengers and airlines with a terminal to match the standards soon to be offered at T5. The replacement terminal would also deliver a high level of environmental performance.

Since July, 20,000 people have been have been consulted. 300 people, including local residents, passengers, local and national government, responded to the public consultation. 59 per cent were in favour of Heathrow East with only nine individuals opposed to the proposal. The remaining 38 per cent, while interested, did not offer an overall opinion.

Tony Douglas, Chief Executive, BAA Heathrow said: “It was vital we sought the views and suggestions of those with an interest in the future of the airport. Through this consultation we have received constructive feedback which we have incorporated into the planning application for Heathrow East.

“The opening of Terminal 5 (T5) in 2008 presents us with a crucial window of opportunity to redevelop our ageing buildings, enabling us to continue to transform Heathrow and to provide a service worthy of the UK’s premiere gateway. Should planning permission be granted, Heathrow East will be a stunning new building - a world-class facility that will incorporate the very latest energy efficient design and construction.”

Respondents to the consultation described Terminal 2 as needing more space and natural light and an improved layout. One passenger summarised many of the issues raised in the consultation: “I think this is essential for the continued success of the airport. Using Terminal 2 is an unpleasant experience with its low ceilings and cramped gate areas.”

Many questions raised through the consultation were concentrated on construction impacts such as traffic and mud on roads. In answer to these, Tony Douglas responds: “The location of Heathrow East within the centre of the airport means that it will be away from residential areas. However we will work to ensure disturbance is kept to a minimum.

“We have learnt a great deal about managing construction impacts through Terminal 5 and intend to follow many of the practices and processes that were successful on the project.”

Terminal 2 opened in 1955 when the security climate was vastly different from today. Heathrow East will be a state-of-the-art passenger facility that is being designed with sufficient flexibility so that it can be adapted to meet future changes in security.

Work will continue on the detailed proposals for Heathrow East Terminal to ensure the most progressive design and construction techniques are included. BAA Heathrow will continue to engage with stakeholders, particularly local residents throughout the course of the planning application and, should Heathrow East be given approval, throughout the construction process.

For enquiries about Heathrow East please email: HET_planningenquiries@baa.com

Media enquiries

double post

Good news - when does construction begin? Will it be ready for the Olympics?

As long as it gets planning permission soon without lengthy enquiries, then yes.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6872/heathrowworkshp3.jpg

2008: Terminal 5 and Concourse 1.

2011: Concourse 2.

2012: Terminal 2.

I have just prepared this image of Heathrow East from the PDF file in JGG's signature. It's our first large rendering of Norman Foster's 30 million pax capacity Heathrow East. My apologies for offering it in two halves. Photobucket won't allow me to post such a large single image:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/HeathrowEast1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/Fatmonkey/London/HeathrowEast2.jpg

I read this document too. Do we know this is a genuine rendering of Heathrow East or merely a rough idea of what the terminal could look like, a la the Olympics Stadium?

Nice terminal design. Two questions,

is Terminal 1 still going to exist after heathrow east; part of it is showing on the render?

I see new piers for terminal 3 there, is that planned?

Design is good, seems like a forest with trunks/canopy. However, I was hoping to see some color, it seems like rogers/foster think heathrow can ony have nuetral tones. Why not something bolder like the red of his new Beijing airport, or the dark tones of HK. Given that it is like a forest, why not add in trees inside to give it a more inviting look.