Could HS2 lead to airport closures or consolidations? If so where/how?

[Bletchleyite]

From: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/potential-hs2-services.214085/page-6#post-5036863

That really would be an environmental coup if HS2 allowed for the closure of an airport! Although Stansted is unlikely to close, as it's used for lots of the diplomatic flights and security response incidents when they think the security will disrupt Heathrow too much. Maybe Luton, as it's catchment is the area due to benefit most from the released capacity between London and Birmingham. Again unlikely, as it's a major maintenance hub.

Much of Luton's market is about places along the M1, which doesn't necessarily overlap that much with the WCML (though Birmingham is also convenient from MK, of course). So I couldn't see it threatening Luton. The reason I mentioned Stansted is twofold - one, it's the furthest out of London of any of the London airports (I don't count Oxford here), and two, it is in the middle of a field and not really near anywhere of great significance, so it doesn't, unlike Luton, have a natural non-London catchment in the same way. The building of the shuttle train thing will make it more of a London airport, but in many ways Luton is more "Home Counties and East Midlands Airport" in terms of its catchment, neither of which Birmingham serves very well, and neither of which HS2 is really that relevant to.

Most people who fly from Stansted do so because it's a Ryanair base and so cheap even though the journey is inconvenient. It therefore wouldn't be a big step for Ryanair to move most of that to Birmingham if more people found that worked for them. They already have a base there.

As for domestics, the biggest thing that could get rid of those (bar the ones from Scotland) would be codesharing so an HS2 train could be booked as part of a flight booking, and thus the connection via OOC "guaranteed" in the same way as it is for a domestic flight connecting to a long-haul. Other countries do that and we should as well. That could allow the complete end of Manchester-London flights.

Having said what I've said about Luton, it is still potentially vulnerable. Its main services are provided by easyJet and Wizz, with other airlines being tiny minorities. It is known that easyJet wants to get into Heathrow, and they've said so a number of times. It's possible that if demand at Heathrow goes down substantially post-COVID, they could consider, for example, designating T4 as a dedicated low-cost carrier terminal, and attracting the orange team to move their base from Luton to there. That leaves Wizz, which is primarily aimed at the Eastern European diaspora in terms of its UK services, a market that pretty much only cares about price (so they'd go to another airport) and may reduce due to Brexit. So the idea of Luton suffering badly despite huge recent investment is not entirely out of the question.

 

[zwk500]

I don't think HS2 on it's own is likely to lead to airport consolidation, for the reasons you've outlined above. I think it would take a dramatic shift in air travel patterns to lower flight demand to the level where an airport could potentially be closed. You'd need demand at Heathrow to fall to allow long-haul traffic to shift from Gatwick, and then the low-cost traffic at either Luton or Stansted could split between Birmingham and Gatwick. But given the capacity London's Airport System is currently utilising, I don't see closures. It would take substantial air travel taxes to drop demand low enough for that.

 

[JonathanH]

I guess it needs to be seen in the context of the alternative land uses after the Airport is shut.

On that measure, I think Gatwick is probably one of the best ones to shut given the airport is in an area where it would be reasonably straightforward to create a small town joining up Crawley and Horley.

Moving the Gatwick operations to Heathrow might be possible if demand doesn't recover. Ultimately, it is about how easy it is for the existing customers to get to the other airports. To some extent, Gatwick users are perfectly happy to go to another airport if the flights are better.

Wouldn't be great for the local economy though.

 

[stuu]

Why on earth would anyone close Gatwick? It's very well connected to all of south London and the south coast, and it is relatively unconstrained in terms of night flights etc.

Stansted is the most vulnerable IMHO

 

[zwk500]

I think Gatwick is probably one of the best ones to shut given the airport is in an area where it would be reasonably straightforward to create a small town joining up Crawley and Horley.

Moving the Gatwick operations to Heathrow might be possible if demand doesn't recover.

Wouldn't be great for the local economy though.

Gatwick is London's second airport, and functions as a secondary intercontinental hub in a way that Luton or Stansted can't do without raising their prices a lot. The only way Gatwick will close is if Heathrow, Luton and Stansted all get a substantial capacity upgrade. Low cost Easyjet-type is only part of Gatwick's traffic - it serves BA regional and intercontinental traffic put off from Heathrow's exorbitant rates

 

[JonathanH]

Low cost Easyjet-type is only part of Gatwick's traffic - it serves BA regional and intercontinental traffic put off from Heathrow's exorbitant rates

Haven't British Airways pulled out of Gatwick almost completely having wanted to do so and consolidate on Heathrow for a long time?

British Airways will scale back its operations at Gatwick under a radical transformation plan to bounce back from the pandemic, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Sources said that new BA chief executive Sean Doyle will operate fewer flights from Gatwick once the airline emerges from the crisis.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...rways-cut-flights-Gatwick-shift-Heathrow.html

The reality of London's airports is that people in most of London will travel to wherever the flight time suits them regardless of whether Gatwick is nearest.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Teesside International Airport scarcely seems worth the bother (with maybe 150000 passengers annually). Might as well close both it and its "handily located" but little used nearby railway station.

 

[zwk500]

Teesside International Airport scarcely seems worth the bother. Might as well close both it and its "handily located" but little used nearby railway station.

Good point - could any of Doncaster, Sheffield (is that still a thing?) or Leeds-Bradford be at threat from Manchester with later phases?

 

[camflyer]

I can't see HS2 having much of a reduction in use of airports. If anything it could encourage Birmingham and Manchester to expand by improving their links to other cities.

The only domestic airline route which HS2 should reduce is Manchester to London for city centre to city centre passengers but there will still be some flights for connections

 

[gingerheid]

It won't lead to the closure of an airport, but it will erode the number of flights a tiny amount.

The ECML and WCML upgrades together with lack of capacity at Heathrow already mean that no airport HS2 goes near is heavily reliant on domestic flights to London (in fact the flights from places like Teesside that might otherwise go to London go to Amsterdam instead!). All the airports that might have been reliant on flights to London already closed (Sheffield, Blackpool) or are propped up by subsidy (Teesside).

High speed lines from Bristol / Reading to Birmingham and Aberdeen could be enough to substantially end UK mainland domestic flying (though the passenger numbers involved are tiny), but even then I suspect all the airports involved would survive (except maybe Bournemouth and Dundee?).

It's interesting to reverse the question. If you wanted to examine each airport in turn and devise rail upgrades that would remove enough passengers to make it unviable, what would you need to do?

A high speed rail link from London to Belfast and Dublin would probably make Belfast City unviable, make Londonderry not only unviable but also indefensible, and remove any possibility of a return for Carlisle?

 

[Bald Rick]

There is no chance of it closing any airports. Domestic traffic is a tiny fraction of the main London airports pre Covid traffic (Luton 6.6%, Stansted 5.5%, Gatwick 7.4%, Heathrow 5.9%).

HS2 not even close any routes. It will reduce flights on a handful of routes (London and Birmingham to Scotland, London to Manchester possibly).

Much of Luton's market is about places along the M1, which doesn't necessarily overlap that much with the WCML (though Birmingham is also convenient from MK, of course). So I couldn't see it threatening Luton. The reason I mentioned Stansted is twofold - one, it's the furthest out of London of any of the London airports (I don't count Oxford here), and two, it is in the middle of a field and not really near anywhere of great significance, so it doesn't, unlike Luton, have a natural non-London catchment in the same way.

Stansted has a substantial non-London catchment in Essex, East Anglia, Lincolnshire.

 

[geordieblue]

There is no chance of it closing any airports. Domestic traffic is a tiny fraction of the main London airports pre Covid traffic (Luton 6.6%, Stansted 5.5%, Gatwick 7.4%, Heathrow 5.9%).

I would suggest that this isn't a tiny fraction - >5% is not insignificant (although obviously this depends on how much of this traffic is connections to overseas flights). If HS2 reduces domestic traffic at Heathrow by, say, a third, then that will represent a noticeable dip in income. I'd agree that it's not enough to close any airports, though, although the effect of COVID remains to be seen.

 

[Bald Rick]

I would suggest that this isn't a tiny fraction - >5% is not insignificant (although obviously this depends on how much of this traffic is connections to overseas flights). If HS2 reduces domestic traffic at Heathrow by, say, a third, then that will represent a noticeable dip in income

A lot of it is connections; elsewhere on this forum it has been said that 80% of Manchester traffic to LHR is connections, and the same is probably true for Leeds and Newcastle. Nevertheless, even if HS2 took all Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Glasgow traffic, which it isn’t, that would only be c40% of Heathrow’s domestic passengers.

And it wouldn’t be a dip in income. If, say 10 domestic flights a day are removed, they will be replaced by 10 long haul flights to the Far East, with more passengers and more income. Indeed this is exactly what has happened over the past decade or so as the U.K. domestic market from Heathrow has shrunk by about a third in terms of flights (63,000 in 2005; 42,000 in 2019)

 

[geordieblue]

A lot of it is connections; elsewhere on this forum it has been said that 80% of Manchester traffic to LHR is connections, and the same is probably true for Leeds and Newcastle. Nevertheless, even if HS2 took all Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Glasgow traffic, which it isn’t, that would only be c40% of Heathrow’s domestic passengers.

And it wouldn’t be a dip in income. If, say 10 domestic flights a day are removed, they will be replaced by 10 long haul flights to the Far East, with more passengers and more income. Indeed this is exactly what has happened over the past decade or so as the U.K. domestic market from Heathrow has shrunk by about a third in terms of flights (63,000 in 2005; 42,000 in 2019)

Possibly a stupid question, but I assume long-distance flights make more money; why, then, aren't they prioritised over domestic flights? Why don't we just give all our flight spots to international traffic? Genuinely interested to know the answer (if there is one, though I imagine it boils down to regional politics).

 

[zwk500]

Possibly a stupid question, but I assume long-distance flights make more money; why, then, aren't they prioritised over domestic flights? Why don't we just give all our flight spots to international traffic? Genuinely interested to know the answer (if there is one, though I imagine it boils down to regional politics).

I suspect it's because if you can't quite fill a long-distance flight from one city with the local population, by running a local flight it acts as a feeder and so several long-hauls leave at closer to 100% loading, thereby making more money than if they ran an addtional long-haul at a lighter loading.

 

[Snow1964]

Possibly a stupid question, but I assume long-distance flights make more money; why, then, aren't they prioritised over domestic flights? Why don't we just give all our flight spots to international traffic? Genuinely interested to know the answer (if there is one, though I imagine it boils down to regional politics).

The big profitable flights tend to need feeder traffic, not everyone flying London-New York is starting in one City and ending in another.

Airlines operate the hub and spoke system where a connection from a surrounding area feeds the big airport, not everyone uses land transport to get there. It’s no different to someone using a branch line train to get to a mainline train.

It would be same principle as taking a big Inter City station declining local trains so it could have more long distance trains using its platforms. But if it did so could they fill all the seats

 

[SynthD]

I wouldn’t look at the Londons, Manchester, Glasgow but the smaller ones like Teeside. Is it possible to get stats on which airports have mostly scheduled flights that don’t feed into international services?

 

[camflyer]

Possibly a stupid question, but I assume long-distance flights make more money; why, then, aren't they prioritised over domestic flights? Why don't we just give all our flight spots to international traffic? Genuinely interested to know the answer (if there is one, though I imagine it boils down to regional politics).

Long distance makes much more money - bigger planes, more landing fees, more shopping/eating in the terminal but Heathrow already operates as few domestic services as it can get away with as the likes of BA need them for feeder services and others would be politically difficult to cancel.

The airport which serves the most UK regional airports is Amsterdam.

 

[HST43257]

I see it most with NPR. With frequent, fast services, there’s no need for Robin Hood, Teeside, Leeds Bradford or Liverpool. Newcastle and Manchester can take it (especially with the Manchester upgrade).

I think there should be less in the south too, perhaps close London City, Southend and Luton (plus tiny ones like Oxford and Ashford) but keep Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted. Also maybe close Exeter but keep Newquay and Bristol.

I reckon Eurostar has a future, but only if it broadens its network. Take away flights like London to Cologne with a 2 hourly London to Berlin. Enhance Eurostar London to Paris to take away many of those flights.

 

[Snow1964]

Here is a link to the 40 Busiest airports in UK
(figures are for 2019, latest year pre Covid)
It is questionable if they are all required

List of Top 20 Airports in UK - World Airport Codes

UK boasts some of the world’s busiest airports, such as London Heathrow. View the full list of the country’s airports ordered by passenger numbers.

www.world-airport-codes.com

Looking at list Bristol has overtaken Glasgow in passenger numbers but has fewer plane movem so must have more passengers per plane.

 

[Bald Rick]

Possibly a stupid question, but I assume long-distance flights make more money; why, then, aren't they prioritised over domestic flights? Why don't we just give all our flight spots to international traffic? Genuinely interested to know the answer (if there is one, though I imagine it boils down to regional politics).

I suspect it's because if you can't quite fill a long-distance flight from one city with the local population, by running a local flight it acts as a feeder and so several long-hauls leave at closer to 100% loading, thereby making more money than if they ran an addtional long-haul at a lighter loading.

Partly as above - in that the long haul flights need domestic feeders. Partly that the process continues - BA have dropped the Leeds Bradford service and I assume will use the slots for somewhere more exotic. But there are also, I believe, some regulations about slots at Heathrow and their use for domestic traffic. Evidently these can change over time.

I see it most with NPR. With frequent, fast services, there’s no need for Robin Hood, Teeside, Leeds Bradford or Liverpool. Newcastle and Manchester can take it (especially with the Manchester upgrade).

What if you live in outer suburban Leeds, and want to go to Malaga? Are you suggesting getting yourself into Leeds, then a train to Manchester Airport? No chance.

Any suggestion that airports will close is simply fanciful. None of these airports was closed 20 years ago when total U.K. air traffic was about half what it is now.

 

[30907]

What if you live in outer suburban Leeds, and want to go to Malaga? Are you suggesting getting yourself into Leeds, then a train to Manchester Airport? No chance.

Depends which outer suburb, though: from North Leeds (or Airedale/Wharfedale if you stretch the definition of suburb) then LBA wins, especially if there's a direct bus; but from South Leeds/Wakefield/Dewsbury it's less clear-cut.
BTW I am not calling Wakefield or Dewsbury auburbs of Leeds - I have lived long enough in towns that value their identiry!

 

[Bald Rick]

Depends which outer suburb, though: from North Leeds (or Airedale/Wharfedale if you stretch the definition of suburb) then LBA wins, especially if there's a direct bus; but from South Leeds/Wakefield/Dewsbury it's less clear-cut.
BTW I am not calling Wakefield or Dewsbury auburbs of Leeds - I have lived long enough in towns that value their identiry!

I don’t disagree. But equally I don’t think that saving 15-20 minutes on a trip to Manchester airport is going to swing more than a small fraction of people from using LBA.

 

[camflyer]

Trains ar great for city centre to city centre but for other people it would still be quicker to fly. It's not a matter of rail replacing flying as they serve different markets.

There is also the political difficulty of closing airports. Local residents may complain about the noise but they do provide a lot of jobs in the area.

 

[telstarbox]

How quiet can an airport get and still make money? I remember Carcassonne in 2007 had two check-in desks, two gates and a vending machine after the one security arch, so really shoestring. It was only served by Ryanair IIRC (mostly to UK airports) yet presumably it was worth it for either the owner or the départment?

Is it all about concentrating as many flight movements into the shortest shifts for ground crew?

 

[camflyer]

How quiet can an airport get and still make money? I remember Carcassonne in 2007 had two check-in desks, two gates and a vending machine after the one security arch, so really shoestring. It was only served by Ryanair IIRC (mostly to UK airports) yet presumably it was worth it for either the owner or the départment?

Is it all about concentrating as many flight movements into the shortest shifts for ground crew?

Lots of airports around the world don't make money but are subsidised as a way of bring tourists in and allowing locals to escape. It was the UK which initially decided that airports should be privately run profit making businesses.

The economics of running an airport:

 

[zwk500]

How quiet can an airport get and still make money? I remember Carcassonne in 2007 had two check-in desks, two gates and a vending machine after the one security arch, so really shoestring. It was only served by Ryanair IIRC (mostly to UK airports) yet presumably it was worth it for either the owner or the départment?

Is it all about concentrating as many flight movements into the shortest shifts for ground crew?

The French are known to provide hefty subsidies for public transport operations.

 

[Bald Rick]

How quiet can an airport get and still make money?

Very. Plenty of airports make money with few or even no commercial scheduled flights at all.

 

[Chester1]

I guess it needs to be seen in the context of the alternative land uses after the Airport is shut.

On that measure, I think Gatwick is probably one of the best ones to shut given the airport is in an area where it would be reasonably straightforward to create a small town joining up Crawley and Horley.

Moving the Gatwick operations to Heathrow might be possible if demand doesn't recover. Ultimately, it is about how easy it is for the existing customers to get to the other airports. To some extent, Gatwick users are perfectly happy to go to another airport if the flights are better.

Wouldn't be great for the local economy though.

London City Airport is probably the only English Airport vulnerable due to change of land use. Its last sale price was something in the region of 20 times its annual profit, clearly due the value of the land. So far only the Green party have supported its closure.

I agree with the majority of posters. HS2 will barely make a difference.

 

[camflyer]

London City Airport is probably the only English Airport vulnerable due to change of land use. Its last sale price was something in the region of 20 times its annual profit, clearly due the value of the land. So far only the Green party have supported its closure.

I agree with the majority of posters. HS2 will barely make a difference.

It's hard to take the Green Party airport policy serious as they would close them regardless of the economic effects.

Also remember that the Greens are against HS2 (presumably because it upsets their supporters in Camden) so they would have no City Airport or high speed rail links.