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Suitability of Heathrow as a location for an airport?
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The article, not the thread
Fair enough, I agree the article is drivel!
HSTEd
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Well although many people do not like the "Boris Island" airport very much (although I have inherited my father's habit of calling it Maplin sands II.....) there are several advantages over the Heathrow site.
For one you could fly 24 hours a day out in the Thames Estuary.... especially if you are all the way out at Shivering Sands so both approach and takeoff paths can be routed entirely over water (or at-least sufficiently so to cause minimal noise disruption to anyone).
This removes one of the major capacity bottlenecks that has and will always plague Heathrow, a third runway there only has half the capacity a runway in the Thames Estuary would have.
And surely if you were going to develop the Heathrow site, you could relatively easily deploy a tram or similar system there while the redevelopment was underway.... I imagine they are quite cheap to build when you are building them at the same time as the town.
For one you could fly 24 hours a day out in the Thames Estuary.... especially if you are all the way out at Shivering Sands so both approach and takeoff paths can be routed entirely over water (or at-least sufficiently so to cause minimal noise disruption to anyone).
This removes one of the major capacity bottlenecks that has and will always plague Heathrow, a third runway there only has half the capacity a runway in the Thames Estuary would have.
And surely if you were going to develop the Heathrow site, you could relatively easily deploy a tram or similar system there while the redevelopment was underway.... I imagine they are quite cheap to build when you are building them at the same time as the town.
That also suggests potential for the reintroduction of Cross Country services to the South Coast.
I often accompany my sister to Heathrow and to be honest for connections to the airport itself, as well as local hotels in the airport area, we find the Piccadilly line to be far and away the most convenient (and cost effective)way to get there.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who was really annoyed when BA stopped most of their domestic flights to Gatwick. It was so much easier to get home directly from there. Losing the 737s was also rather annoying for someone like me who sees Airbuses as Voyagers with wings, but that just compounds the issue. Probably, if I was flying to Canada, I wouldn't mind too much.
As usual, Greenback talks sense.
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The first part I definitely agree with, provided they at least stop near Heathrow (at Hayes or Iver) even if they cannot actually stop at the airport. The second part, I'm not so sure, but that's coloured by the fact that one doesn't get to see Paddington by using the Picc (one doesn't get to see very much at all). Still decent value for money though.
As usual, Greenback talks sense.
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The first part I definitely agree with, provided they at least stop near Heathrow (at Hayes or Iver) even if they cannot actually stop at the airport. The second part, I'm not so sure, but that's coloured by the fact that one doesn't get to see Paddington by using the Picc (one doesn't get to see very much at all). Still decent value for money though.
That is a downside - in spite of its good facilities (and architecture) Paddington is a bit awkward to get to. The open air bit of the Pic fortunately isn't too boring, and even in the tunnel you can always play "spot the disused station"
tbtc
Veteran Member
True - it's just in the wrong place for a significant part of the country (compared to Heathrow which can be reached via the M4 from South Wales/ Western England and via the M25 from much of the rest of the UK without having to go into London).
L&Y Robert
Member
Come on, Wath Yard, let's use our imagination a bit - clearly the rail facilities that exist now wouldn't do for a big area like this, but if the area were to be redeveloped then the transport systems, roads, rail, tube, bus, and maybe tram would be extended, adapted, shaped and made to serve the development. So, for example, the Picadilly line might have a big loop, or, say, three branches going left, right, middle. That sort of thing. The transport development is part of the overall development - it's a bit like a new town. Think laterally. Look at possibilities.
junglejames
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You obviously havent found the A380s yet! They make any boeing look and sound like a pendy/ voyager hybrid!! Oh, with the voyager having souped up noisier engines!
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Heathrow is in a very good loaction. It has its downfalls, as it is quite hemmed in, but apart from that is fine, and thats from someone who lives closer to Boris Island! I would rather we did what we could with Heathrow. Build the 3rd runway, tells the nimbys where to go (Heathrow was there first) and maintain Heathrows position as the hub of the world, the busiest international airport in the world.
It really isnt that bad an airport at all, considering its size. T3 and T5 are quite pleasant.
Erm, BA still fly from Gatwick to Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, mostly with Boeing 737-400s. They also serve Aberdeen, Inverness, Belfast-City, Newcastle and Newquay from Gatwick through codeshares with Flybe, who operate Embraer and Bombardier (
) aircraft. So, if you really wanted to fly from Gatwick to Aberdeen, the option is there and you can even book with BA!Manchester has plenty of international flights, it's a fact that you can fly to more places directly from Manchester than Heathrow (boosted admittedly by some obscure once a week charter flights). It's something like 225 destinations at Manchester vs. 175 at Heathrow. There will be a net reduction in the number of domestic flights come the end of Summer, when bmi is fully absorbed into BA. I know the number of Manchester to Heathrow flights will be decreasing by about 3-5 each day.
There's absolutely no need for anyone from any regional airport in the UK to take a connection through Heathrow or indeed for anyone to travel by rail to Heathrow. I guarantee that you can reach every corner of the world from any major international airport in the UK regions without going near Heathrow.
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I use Heathrow, and indeed any London airport as little as possible; they're all awkward to get to and the cost of getting to them by train makes me ashamed to be British, a complete rip-off of foreigners and nationals alike.
My son is a pilot for a budget airline and says that European business from UK regional airports is booming as it's usually cost-effective for long-haul to use a budget airline to Frankfurt, Schipol or Paris and use a non-UK carrier from there to your final destination dure to inflated UK airport charges. This has certain risks akin to split-ticketing on the trains but if you can use Lufthansa, Air France or one of the excellent Middle Eastern airlines for your entire journey that risk is taken away.
I think that nothing whatsoever should be done either in abandonment or growth initiatives of any London airport, these trends will bring demand in line with supply.
My son is a pilot for a budget airline and says that European business from UK regional airports is booming as it's usually cost-effective for long-haul to use a budget airline to Frankfurt, Schipol or Paris and use a non-UK carrier from there to your final destination dure to inflated UK airport charges. This has certain risks akin to split-ticketing on the trains but if you can use Lufthansa, Air France or one of the excellent Middle Eastern airlines for your entire journey that risk is taken away.
I think that nothing whatsoever should be done either in abandonment or growth initiatives of any London airport, these trends will bring demand in line with supply.
Sadly, if you buy a through ticket from the UK to X via another country, you still pay the full UK APD for the whole journey. The UK tax is embarrassingly high compared to elsewhere - £81 p.p for a flight to America against £10 p.p from France or £0 in the Netherlands. The treasury itself has admitted that it's purely a revenue generator and is not a 'green tax' in any way shape or form.
What has become popular among foreign cost-conscious tourists is 'tax avoidance', in that they will fly into the UK, but leave the UK by train/ferry and fly home from mainland European airports (after staying and spending money in France or wherever).
Regarding the foreign hubs, Amsterdam Schipol has long been a popular alternative for UK travellers - many regional airports (e.g. Humberside and Cardiff) have frequent links to Amsterdam. KLM have invested in the UK for many years (evidence: KLM employs several hundred British cabin crew and pilots based at places like Leeds-Bradford, Edinburgh and Norwich, despite the vast majority not speaking Dutch at all). BA hasn't really invested in the regions at all, excluding the maintenance facilities.
So, I'd say just let the market decide what happens. If Heathrow isn't sufficient and expansion or relocation is not pursued, there are enough alternatives. It may well hurt UK plc, but on the other hand it would keep UK aircraft emissions from increasing and that could well be a positive thing.
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NY Yankee
Member
If the British railway system wasn't so nebulous, then people could avoid the overcrowding at Heathrow and Gatwick by taking international flights to Birmingham and then taking a national railway train to London.
starrymarkb
Established Member
In theory yes, in practice the airlines wouldn't give up Heathrow for Birmingham, look how many US Airlines switched from Gatwick when the OpenSkies agreement came in. (Previously only BA, Virgin, American and United had rights Heathrow-US). Heathrow is where the Premium traffic lies.
Hasn't stopped that idea being a 'selling point' of HS2
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What does "nebulous" mean in the context of a rail network?
telstarbox
Established Member
Birmingham's too far from London (although not much further than Stansted). BHX and MAN airports have much more extensive rail connections than LHR though.
[/i
NY Yankee
Member
I'm not sure of the difference between British English and American English but I meant confusing. I went to the British national railway website and it was difficult to navigate. They don't seem to have any lines-just station to station.
Well how else would you plan a journey? I don't think "I want to go from Newcastle to London what lines get me there?" I think "I want to go from Newcastle to London what trains get me there?"
The lines of course have names (in my example you'd be using the East Coast Main Line as your first choice) but they're not really used to plan journeys. Forgive, but I'm a little confused as to how else you'd expect to be planning a journey?
All around the rest of the world, mainline passenger rail networks are organised just like the London Underground where you have the Jubilee Line, the Victoria line and so on, with names or numbers depending on the local operator. They don't have so many variations as British timetables do.
The British could be that organised if they wanted to be. All they would need to do is disentangle routes, organise good connections and convince the public that good connections are a good thing that make for a better service across the board than trying to provide a small number of 'direct' trains each day.
A good example of this is actually Heathrow and HS2. The best way to make this happen is not to make a massive spur line of HS2 to serve a Heathrow station when that would just be an expensive white elephant duplicating the perfectly good Crossrail service to Heathrow. Instead you make sure that the new Old Oak Common station is designed based on world's best practice to be the best interchange point possible so HS2 and Crossrail can both run at higher frequencies rather than both networks having to split resources.
The British could be that organised if they wanted to be. All they would need to do is disentangle routes, organise good connections and convince the public that good connections are a good thing that make for a better service across the board than trying to provide a small number of 'direct' trains each day.
A good example of this is actually Heathrow and HS2. The best way to make this happen is not to make a massive spur line of HS2 to serve a Heathrow station when that would just be an expensive white elephant duplicating the perfectly good Crossrail service to Heathrow. Instead you make sure that the new Old Oak Common station is designed based on world's best practice to be the best interchange point possible so HS2 and Crossrail can both run at higher frequencies rather than both networks having to split resources.
ian959
Member
Which is exactly what I now do if I have to go to London. I avoid Heathrow like the plague wherever possible.
That's just how things are. There are no 'lines' as such.
My local station is Preston. There are direct journeys to all manner of places, but there's no specific 'line' to book (though people both in and outside the industry will understand that a specific train will go along the Blackpool lines towards various population centres in that direction, along the East Lancashire Line towards various population centres in another direction, and so on)
You're absolutely right that there's no 'lines' in the way that you'd be used to in the US in heavy rail. Metro and Undergound lines tend to have names/colours in the US model, though.
There isn't one country in Europe that has a system like that on a nationwide scale. It's not an effective use of resources in densely populated countries where travel patterns change depending on many factors such as the time of day.
The UK does have many 'fixed services', for example during the day Virgin Trains run a service Manchester to London, 3 times an hour, with each hourly service stopping at the same places enroute. There are often extra stops at peak time to cater for additional demand due to commuters e.t.c.
Not read the entire thread so forgive me if I'm repeating something that's already been said...
i) Scrap domestic flights and get people to use the rail network. If you look at domestic flight times, they fall mostly in the off-peak times of the railways, so we'd be getting more out of our existing infrastructure.
ii) Make the most out of London's other airports by connecting them by a (possibly high-speed) dedicated rail line. Perhaps something of an arc going Heathrow - Gatwick - Stansted, with a stop in central(ish) London somewhere - Waterloo or City Airport, for example. That way all the Airports could operate as a single entity, reducing duplication etc.
[Oh, and make BAA pay for that last one]
i) Scrap domestic flights and get people to use the rail network. If you look at domestic flight times, they fall mostly in the off-peak times of the railways, so we'd be getting more out of our existing infrastructure.
ii) Make the most out of London's other airports by connecting them by a (possibly high-speed) dedicated rail line. Perhaps something of an arc going Heathrow - Gatwick - Stansted, with a stop in central(ish) London somewhere - Waterloo or City Airport, for example. That way all the Airports could operate as a single entity, reducing duplication etc.
[Oh, and make BAA pay for that last one]
starrymarkb
Established Member
Can't see that happening, I recently flew Bristol to Glasgow and back the same day, the flight times gave me about 10-11 useful hours in Glasgow city centre. I'm not sure the train would a viable replacement for such a trip.
Well... On i) domestic flights have already been scrapped on those routes where they cannot compete with rail travel. But to scrap them all (even Inverness?) would be daft. Firstly, the majority of domestic traffic on the nearer airports to London is connecting, not O&D. So, unless you have a dedicated transfer point at the airport with guaranteed connections, that's a non-starter.
Secondly, you're assuming most domestic traffic is from central London to the major cities. While that's probably the biggest single source of traffic, I doubt it's a majority.
Finally, domestic traffic is a tiny proportion of the flights at Heathrow. And with the purchase of BD by BA (and ongoing erosion of flights over the years), they've really been consolidated as much as possible. The fact that BA are now considering reintroducing LHR-LBA should tell you something.
On point ii) remember that BAA no longer runs Gatwick.
As a separate point, It has to be borne in mind that Heathrow isn't just a London airport - it's an airport for the southern half of England and a national hub. At present, transport is all focused on central London, which is a huge error (look at AMS, FRA or CPH for examples of how to integrate transport to a far wider area). Moving it to a location inaccessible to most places other than London and a tiny corner of the country would cause all sorts of disruption, and focus economic activity on London more than ever before.
Plus, moving it into an area of massive migratory bird flightpaths is just sheer idiocy. How many Chesley B Sullenberger IIIs do we have?
Heathrow has outgrown its present site, so you have several things you can do: move it, expand and reorganise the local area, set up multiple national hubs, use slot pairs as efficiently as possible, integrate high-speed rail (properly integrate, not "we will have a station somewhere nearby"), and the wildcard of moving short-haul narrowbody flights to Northolt, with a dedicated airside shuttle between the two. I would say you have to look at all angles to see a solution - and one for the whole of southern England, not just London.
To be honest, though, although Heathrow needs some serious rebuilding (which it is getting), it's pretty efficient at what it does. The problem is that, being at capacity, all it takes is something seemingly minor that affects runway throughput (heavy rain, fog, high winds, etc) and it all goes to pot very quickly - there is little capacity for queues to build up. The rest of it is down to the ineptitude of UKBF and the DfT.
Erm, BA still fly from Gatwick to Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, mostly with Boeing 737-400s. They also serve Aberdeen, Inverness, Belfast-City, Newcastle and Newquay from Gatwick through codeshares with Flybe, who operate Embraer and Bombardier (
Well, yes, that's true, but being FlyBe, it's not so easy to travel unless you can pare it down to hand luggage (my mac with lots of pockets is useful here). I also believe the Bombardier ones are Canadair designed as well. Now I need to fly on one for comparison
.Never been too sure about A-380s, although that may be something to do with the modern airliner/decaying beached whale liveries they carry (I'd love to see one in old school BOAC) and all that apparently wasted space at the front of the upper deck (a 747-style upper deck cockpit would be better).
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Now this makes a lot of sense. I'm not so sure about Northolt, that's mostly RAF, but would make a good general aviation aerodrome if abandoned. However, an airside shuttle via Crossrail is possible to get to Stansted (as I've pointed out a few times) where there is clearly spare capacity and room to upgrade the second runway to operational status. Sorting out the queueing problems, in the air, on the tarmac and in the terminals, is definitely a major priority. Getting a few more airlines to Gatwick (another place with room for a second runway and already with better rail access) should be another. The third should be the improved rail link, which if to LGV standards could be the stub of an HS3 to Bristol and South Wales. That depends on improving access from the west and south as well.
Northolt is to be sold off. There have already been some proposals for use for civil aviation, although, as you'd expect, people living in the area aren't especially keen.
The problem with moving individual flights elsewhere is that you need to understand where your traffic is going to and how. If you move BA flights to Stansted and Gatwick, you're effectively relying solely on O&D traffic, as nobody is going to include an inter-airport transfer in their itinerary by choice (unless that transfer is as quick as an inter-terminal shuttle, which is why Northolt could just about work, but Gatwick and Stansted are out).
You also need to move things over wholesale - if half the London - Frankfurt flights go to Gatwick and half stay at Heathrow, and there are delays on incoming long-hauls (there will always be), and you find you get over to Gatwick after a red-eye, miss your flight, but then find there's nothing for 4 hours unless you get back to Heathrow, well... Next time, you'll be on Lufthansa.
It's different for flights using London airports as a spoke, but then, you still have to consider the final destination and mode of transport of your passengers. All heading to the City of London - great! Use Stansted. Ah, but they're all bankers who will expect a car service on arrival... Hmm, no longer quite so good. Oh, and a lot of them are heading out to the business parks in the M4 corridor. Hmm, we really want to go to Heathrow, then...
I think a better scheme would be to create a north UK hub, possible somewhere like Manchester, where you can get through traffic as well as O&D, to support the volume of flights. That way, you can prioritise London for O&D flights, as it clearly has one of the greater draws in Europe. But it's still a really difficult balancing act when a number of your flights rely on a 50/50 mix of transfer and O&D, particularly with the latter in premium classes (which you wouldn't get to destinations other than LON, FRA, ZRH, etc). But now BA's main DSH competitor at Heathrow is gone, I doubt we'd see this.
Maybe we should go back to the 60s and move the main airport to Cublington. Politically impossible now, of course...
starrymarkb
Established Member
Well, yes, that's true, but being FlyBe, it's not so easy to travel unless you can pare it down to hand luggage (my mac with lots of pockets is useful here). I also believe the Bombardier ones are Canadair designed as well. Now I need to fly on one for comparison
The Q400 is officially the DHC-8-400. The DHC Standing for De Havilland Canada. It is also known as the Dash 8
Also if you are on a Flybe flight codeshared with a BA Flight number and book with BA then BA Baggage allowances apply (ie No charges)
L&Y Robert
Member
It will have to be faced sooner or later, politically and practically. It may take a major disaster - a crash on approach in central london, say, to get the whole matter on the table once again. I notice that Posters to this thread tend to think in terms of the rail infrastructure that exists, not what could be built. If we can seriously contemplate HS2, Crossrail and so on, a high capacity link from London to a new airport site is easy meat - just more of the same. In my opinion this whole airport thing is more important than any of those projects, right from the "Growth or No Growth" air transport issue down to the detailed considerations of siting of the thing and its several ground-side transport links. It has been looked at before - The Roskill Commission - in 1971 and shed-loads of stuff written about it at the time - No Airport Here - sort of thing. Roskill thought Thames estuary was the best bet, so does Boris, so do I - but if the fuss about a colony of bats in a tunnel in Oxford is anything to go by, think of the hoo-ha zillions of marshland birds will create. I say "Will" because Thames estuary is where I personally think it will be.
The bird issue is more one of safety than of environmentalism, however. Birdstrike is a real and serious issue facing airports like LaGuardia, and any Thames Estuary airport would have that issue on a far larger scale. The NYNJ Port Authority struggles to cope with the bird management (i.e. culling) needed there.
I personally don't think that a repeared cull on the scale required to safely operate an airport on the Isle of Grain would be either manageable or palatable.
I also think that the estuary, whatever railway lines you put in, is the wrong location to serve the wider catchment area of a national airport. It's out on a limb, and I have no faith in this country to organise adequate connections beyond London to where the traffic originates - not just the cities, but the myriad business parks and commuter estates that litter the home counties.
On that point, though, I would love to be proven wrong.
I personally don't think that a repeared cull on the scale required to safely operate an airport on the Isle of Grain would be either manageable or palatable.
I also think that the estuary, whatever railway lines you put in, is the wrong location to serve the wider catchment area of a national airport. It's out on a limb, and I have no faith in this country to organise adequate connections beyond London to where the traffic originates - not just the cities, but the myriad business parks and commuter estates that litter the home counties.
On that point, though, I would love to be proven wrong.
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