Decreasing delays at Heathrow
So the national government has given the third airport at Heathrow the go-ahead – a brave move considering the opposition which includes people outside the usual locals and environmentalists. The Mayor of London is against it as are the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats. The Tory transport shadow secretary was very clear – a Tory government will not build the third runway.
I’ll repeat what I have said here before – the biggest problem that Heathrow has operationally is the number and extent of delays. The problem is severe when compared to Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. The reason for the delays is that Heathrow is running a 99% capacity so any slight snag becomes a major problem with planes backing up with delays and cancellations almost immediately. Paris, which runs at 80% capacity has redundancy built in. Although there are occasional problems, they are small and of short duration.
Adding a third runway will, at first, give that operational spare capacity but surely a much easier route would be to reduce the number of flights until the airport is running at 80% capacity. It does not mean that the number of passengers is reduced, just the number of flights. The average size of plane will get bigger.
How do we reduce the number of flights? Auction them for, say, ten year periods with a few slots coming up for renewal each week. The reduction to 80% happens on renewal as the slot cannot be renewed if the two slots before and after it are already occupied.
Job done.
Here’s a thought: 90% of Britain’s trade is conducted by sea
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Comments
Heathrow
Interesting statistic about trade by sea - which suggests the argument about the importance of Heathrow to our international trade is overplayed. Its importance to the economy must also be questionable as far more Britons fly abroad from Heathrow than non-Britons fly in, suggesting a net loss to the economy. Furthermore interchange passengers don't spend much. Yes, replace those short flights with rail and free up capacity.
3rd runway at Heathrow
I have just read Andrew Davis's article on the subject, and I can't help but think that a much easier way to reduce capacty at Heathrow would be to ban all flights of less than 500 miles, which can easily be replaced by train.
Moreover, the saving made by not building the third runway could be allocated to building a couple of fast rail lines up and down the country and everybody would win. Less pollution, less noise, happiness for all!
Sophie
3rd Runway at Heathrow
Alas this isn't something to be dealt with by a simple blanket 'fix'. Train to Guernsey? Belfast? Glasgow and back in a day? I don't think so. A reducing of slots as suggested looks better to me. But I don't think you can look at Heathrow on its own. I live in Newcastle where the airport has expanded massively over the last decade. You can now fly to Dubai and connect to pretty well everywhere east of there: you can fly to Canada and the US: and the flights even to Newquay cost about a third of the train fare (yes, even the advance train fares which aren't very promising on Arriva Cross Country any more) and take a quarter of the time, even allowing for check in time. So isn't part of the solution to make the trains more attractive again, charge more tax for the use of UK airports and use the money to subsidise railways?
Just a little afterthought: I think it was in Richard Hammond's 'Engineering Connections' that it was mentioned that the A380 airbus uses less fuel per passenger mile than a family car. Can this really be right? And I'd also be interested to know how Air South West's Bombadier aircraft (A-rated, according to them) compare with the four coach Arriva diesel trains. My guess is that they are in the same ball park.
Sarah
3rd runway at Heathrow
Yes, the third runway makes little sense unless you work for BAA or British Airways. They would seem to want it at any cost. How do you change their minds?