General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
Sir Richard Branson: Virgin expansion finished in UK – without a 3rd Heathrow runway
Virgin Atlantic was now focusing on expansion in America and Australia rather than the UK. Branson's announcement is intended to put pressure on the government to expand Heathrow. He made the somewhat bizarre statement that " If there is one thing that is holding the country back it was the decision by all three parties to do the cowardly thing and that was to say they wouldn't allow a third runway.". So that explains the economic downturn? Virgin's problem is that it cannot get enough slots at Heathrow, especially if BA buys BMI. So as a bit of a bribe, Branson says Virgin would be willing to invest £5bn in expansion at Heathrow with new routes and take on thousands of new people, if the Government reversed its position on the 3rd runway. Another strange comment is that "in 5 to 10 years planes would burn clean fuel and have quieter engines." What ??
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ICAO: Global air passenger traffic up 6.4% in 2011, to rise 4.5% annually going forward
ICAO say the number of global air passengers rose by 6.4% in 2011. IATA said the number was 5.9%. ICAO says the rise in capacity was 6.5%, and IATA says it was 6.3% (revenue passenger kilometres). ICAO hopes global air passenger numbers will rise by 4.5% per year through to 2030. ICAO also predicts that total aircraft movements (including both passenger and cargo flights) will double from 24.79 million annually in 2010 to 51.71 million per year by 2030. IATA said in 2011, the rate of growth of international passengers was up 6.9%, while the growth in domestic passengers was up 4.2%, giving a total of up 5.9%. IATA says European passenger growth in 2011 was up 9.2%. AEA said its member airlines had growth of 7.2% in 2011. Europe is 26% of the total air passenger traffic, Asia-Pacific 30.5%, North America 27.1%, Middle East 8.1%, Latin America 5.8%, and Africa 2.5%.
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Downton and Harry Potter stars take to our screens to encourage us to holiday at home
Various stars and celebrities have been used in adverts encouraging Britons to holiday at home. This is a much-anticipated - and controversial - advertising campaign to encourage Britons to holiday at home which has now been launched. (8th March). The star-studded adverts, which feature Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery, Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, as well as British icons Stephen Fry and Julie Walters, are part of a £5million campaign. The initiative hopes to harness the power of the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee and inspire Britons with the tagline: 'Holidays at Home are Great'. It is the country's biggest ever domestic tourism drive and VisitEngland predicts the new campaign should generate an additional £80m in domestic spend and create 12,500 jobs.
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UK aviation industry presents its (unrealistic) Road-Map for growing while cutting carbon by 2050
An aviation industry body calling itself The Sustainable Aviation Group has updated its 2008 Road-Map on how it hopes to continue growing as much as possible, and yet also magically keep its carbon emissions down. There are many assumptions about the extent of fuel efficiency from new planes and new engines; from better operational practices such as better air traffic control. And a huge hope that biofuels will be the salvation and provide immense carbon savings. In addition, they will depend to a huge extent on carbon trading with other sectors, so at least a quarter of their emissions will have to be compensated for by other sectors. And for all this they want a lot of government subsidy and assistance - which means money from the tax payer.
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Aviation employment figure of 150,000 jobs in 2009 given by DfT is wrong. It was 120,000.
The DfT's Aviation Scoping Document, produced for the consultation that started in March 2011, had the confident assertion that: the air transport sector "provides about 150,000 jobs in the UK and supports many more indirectly". However, when challenged on this figure, it emerges that it is incorrect, and much higher than the correct number. The correct number is 120,000 as the average for 2009. Some wrong figures were used, and then unjustifiably rounded up to produce the incorrect 150,000 figure. The figure for employment in the aviation sector is obtained by adding the SIC 51 (Air transport) and SIC 52.23 (Service activities incidental to air transport) data from the government's Annual Business Survey. The DfT say they will ensure that this error is not made again, and employment figures are not inflated artificially.
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Justine Greening confirms a 3rd Heathrow runway will not be in aviation capacity consultation
Talking to the BBC, Justine Greening has confirmed that she rules out a third runway at Heathrow which is "not the right answer". She also says "We are getting to the stage where there is a question mark over whether we've got the capacity to meet the country's needs. In the short term we've always been clear that we need to make the most of the capacity we do have. We need to use what we've got better and more effectively and we're looking at how we do that, but we also need to look ahead." And she says it's time to have a proper "fact based debate" about the future of airport capacity in Britain and in particular, the South East. Sadly Southend is going to be expected to bear more of the burden.
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Letter from Brian Ross (of Stop Stansted Expansion) in the Standard
Brian Ross writes that the aviation industry conflates its own interests with the interests of UK plc. hiding some inconvenient truths. By comparison with the UK, Japan with twice our population achieves twice our GDP with far less airport capacity. The reason being that less than a quarter of UK passengers are business travellers. Heathrow flies more holidaymakers to Miami than business people to China, and more passengers to Nice than to either Beijing or Shanghai. London airports last year handled 134 million passengers with more than 500 worldwide destinations direct. No other city in the world comes close to that level of capacity and connectivity. Government is right to stick to its election promise of no more runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick. And the industry should stop trying to re-open yesterday's arguments.
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IAG purchase of BMI will not be reviewed by OFT
The OFT has decided not to review IAG's deal to buy BMI from Lufthansa, so the decision on whether to approve the deal will remain with the European Commission., Virgin Atlantic earlier lodged a formal complaint about the merger with the Commission, which has until 16 March to decide, although the deadline may be extended. The Virgin complaint alleged the deal would create a monopoly for British Airways on some routes between Heathrow and Scotland and north-western England. Virgin says passengers could face higher fares and reduced services linking the North West, Scotland and Heathrow if BA takes over BMI. Virgin - which also bid for BMI - has also complained that the deal would give IAG a dominant position at Heathrow.
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Unions and industry join forces to push Heathrow third runway
BAA has commissioned a study from Oxford Economics (not part of Oxford University) to look at the economics of expanding Heathrow. The study has not been made publicly available. It apparently claims that the UK could lose 141,000 jobs per year by 2012 through some very convoluted calculations, taking absolutely every possible job vaguely related throughout the UK. They claim that if Heathrow is constrained, "capacity constraints will cost the UK £4.5bn in GDP from foreign investment and £1.6bn in lost trade with emerging markets per year by 2021" (unless there is a new runway ??) Basically they are lobbying for a 3rd Heathrow runway, and to hell with its environmental impacts. The report is enthusiastically backed by Unite and the GMB, and by the Institute of Directors. When experts analyse the report in detail, it is likely that the claims will be shown to be greatly exaggerated, and ignore costs it is inconvenient to include.
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IMO meeting concludes without agreement on market-based measures on shipping emissions
A conference of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has ended, with little progress on deciding how to deal with shipping carbon emissions. There was agreement that something should be done, but not what. Instead of progress, talks got mired in technical detail. Proposals including a levy on bunker fuel or a global emissions trading scheme remained on the table and would be addressed again at the next IMO meeting in early October. The EU is threatening to bring shipping into its ETS if there is no progress. Brussels published a consultation on four policy options, including a compensation fund, an emissions trading system, a fuel or carbon tax and a mandatory emission reduction per ship.This ends in April and is due to be followed by an impact assessment, a draft proposal sometime between April and June and a final proposal in the last three months of the year.