Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
Heathrow investors snub Chris Grayling’s request for their funding of Heathrow Hub scheme
Some of Heathrow's leading shareholders have snubbed a request from the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, to back the Heathrow Hub scheme, that involves adding another runway at the western end of the northern runway. Sky News understands that big investors in FGP Topco, Heathrow's parent company, are refusing to give a written commitment to funding the rival scheme. Heathrow argues that it has not done sufficient due diligence to justify giving its backing to Heathrow Hub. Mr Grayling made the request at a meeting with the two runway promoters last month, since when further talks have been held between executives at Heathrow and Heathrow Hub. While it is understood John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow's CEO, would accept the Hub plan if he cannot get his north-west runway, the airport's leading shareholders are refusing to back it. They believe future financial returns would be lower with the Hub scheme than the NW runway scheme. Sky News has been told that Mr Holland-Kaye had been told by his shareholders that acknowledging any support for the Hub scheme would be a tactical error, at a time they believe is so close to an announcement by the Government. Both Heathrow schemes have offered cut-price versions of their proposals in a bid to convince ministers of their merits. FGP Topco's shareholders are Ferrovial (25% stake), and sovereign wealth and pension funds from Australia, Canada, China, Qatar and Singapore.
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Blog: The case against Heathrow is not the case for Gatwick
In a blog for The London Economic, Jack Peat writes that just because there are strong arguments against a 3rd Heathrow runway is not a good enough reason to opt for a Gatwick runway. He says: "The easiest way to spot a failing campaign is to seek out the one that argues the shortcomings of its opponent rather than championing its own merits." Gatwick has spent a lot of time and effort putting out negative messaging about Heathrow. There are rumours about that Theresa May might tell both airports they can have a new runway - with a lot of conditions. It Gatwick is allowed a runway, it will be for all the wrong reasons. The Richmond Heathrow Campaign has shown that a high proportion of the added capacity from a 3rd Heathrow runway would only be for more international-to-international transfers. These deliver almost no benefit to the UK economy, other than filling up planes that fly many times per day to the most popular (=profitable) destinations, like New York. Jack Peat says: "If expanding airport capacity in the south east is about catering for more transit passengers, I would happily hand that responsibility to Schiphol or Frankfurt." Heathrow does not need to expand for that. Unless there is more demand for regular domestic and short-haul flights to Europe there won’t be the demand from the airlines to run more flights through Gatwick. "End of."
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Emirates postpones its 4th daily Gatwick flight to Dubai – there are 6 per day from Heathrow
Emirates has confirmed it is postponing the launch of its fourth daily service from Dubai into Gatwick. Emirates had been due to start the 4th daily flight in October, which would have been the airline’s 10th daily service into London. An Emirates spokesperson said: “Emirates can confirm that we are delaying the launch of our fourth daily service to London Gatwick. This decision was made as part of our routine operational review, to ensure that our capacity is deployed to best serve customer demand across our global network. We remain committed to London and will continue to serve our customers on this route with a total of 63 weekly flights from Heathrow and Gatwick.” Back in March, Emirates has announced it would add its 10th daily flight to Dubai. It would have been a new B777-300ER (eight first class suites, 42 in business class, and 310 in economy) and would have meant 4 from Gatwick and 6 from Heathrow per day. There were plans to change to an A380 from Heathrow from June.
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UK’s smaller airports want proper government policy to boost their expansion
An article in Airport Technology makes the case for better UK aviation policy, to boost the regional airports and the smaller London airports - rather than focus only on Heathrow and Gatwick. Airports like Luton, Stansted, Birmingham and London City do not want their interests overlooked, in the ill-advised focus just on "which of two sites to put a new runway." Speaking on this at the Airport Design, Development and Engineering conference, representatives from the 4 airports reinforced their call on the government to support their expansion. They agreed that a better civil aviation policy is needed in order to build infrastructure, improve connectivity to and from the airports and "stay competitive in the fast growing, ultra-connected global aviation market." But a lot of the usual PR and spin were trotted out, and the article repeats so many of the standard claims - that airports are vital for business growth; ignoring the tourism deficit caused by ever more UK residents taking cheap overseas leisure trips; ignoring the recent growth which is largely just making up the huge declines during the recession years; making unsound comparison with China; and entirely ignoring any adverse impacts of aviation on the populations overflown, or negatively affected by the industry. There is, of course, no mention of carbon emissions. The industry is great at self-promotion, and only seeing one side of an argument.
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Edinburgh flight path consultation ends, with the second part due early in 2017
The consultation by Edinburgh airport on changes to flight paths that started in June has now ended. The airport says the results were mixed, with some people not expressing opposition. This may be because the area that was covered by the consultation included places that have not seen increased plane noise, and have not been affected by the changes. There were around 5,000 responses, and the airport's consultation website was viewed about 80,000 times. Edinburgh airport say no changes could be made to existing flight paths until a further stage of consultation, proposing specific routes, was completed and the plans approved by the CAA. A detailed report on the airport's consultation is due to be finished in January, and the second stage of the consultation will begin early in 2017. Some residents are already affected by noise pollution from changes in the flight paths and have accused the airport of pushing ahead with airspace expansion without considering other ways to increase capacity. Edinburgh Airport Watch said that although the airport is 'consulting', they have already changed the pattern of use of the airspace - people have been robbed of their peace and quiet. The airport wants the change flight paths, in order to get more planes taking off and landing at peak times of day, in order to make more money for the airport.
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Heathrow Hub says, to match Heathrow’s offer, it would cut price of its runway scheme by £2 billion
The backers of the Heathrow Hub scheme, to lengthen Heathrow's northern runway towards the west, have now said they could cut the price of their scheme by £2 million. This offer comes just days after Heathrow's Chairman, Lord Deighton, said their north west runway scheme could be cut by up to £3 billion. The Heathrow north-west runway scheme is expected to cost £17.5 billion (or £14.5 billion with the cheaper scheme) - and the Heathrow Hub scheme is expected to cost £12 billion according to their website (or £10 billion with the cheaper scheme). But Heathrow Hub are now telling the press that their scheme could cost £7.5 million. Their Factsheet of November 2014 said the cost of the runway itself would be £9.2 billion, with £2.8 billion for surface access improvements. In November 2013 they anticipated the cost of diverting the M25 for the runway would be £0.7 billion. Heathrow Hub also proudly say there would be no cost to the public. In reality, Transport for London said (February 2015) of a larger Heathrow, not differentiating between the two schemes: "Our assessment estimated that in order for a fully developed Heathrow (149 mppa) to achieve all of the above surface access objectives in the long term (2040-50), costs would be around £15-20 billion*. The Heathrow Hub scheme is privately funded, and hopes to license its scheme to Heathrow airport for up to £5m a year for 20 years, if successful.
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John Redwood, MP for Wokingham, says Theresa May should drop Heathrow plan
John Redwood, the Conservative MP for Wokingham about 25 km west of Heathrow and under some of its flight paths, has said that the government should drop the three very huge projects they inherited from Gordon Brown and David Cameron. ie. Hinkley, HS2 and Heathrow. Each is expensive, highly contentious, and has been much delayed by indecision, argument and opposition. John Redwood was Shadow Secretary of State for Deregulation, from May 2005 to December 2005, and Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, from June 1999 to February 2000. He believes all 3Hs should be scrapped, and there are many other good local projects that should be paid for instead. "I’m all for spending on better trains, power stations and airports, but I don’t want to throw too much money at projects that are so mired in rows and costs." On Heathrow noise he says: "Unfortunately Heathrow has recently with NATS changed the routes and noise corridors, annoying many more residential areas near it. There was no proper consultation. When you want to expand you need to do better at showing you are a good and considerate neighbour." ..."More capacity can be provided through Northolt, Gatwick and other London area airports. Smaller quicker schemes could alleviate the pressures."
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8th October – massive gathering at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, resonating with the sound of thousands of walking sticks
After the massive mobilisations against the planned new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, of January 9th and February 27th, the French government organised a biased consultation in June. That gave a small majority in favour of the airport scheme. Opponents of the airport believe the consultation did not give a fair result, due to the choice of its geographical cover. The government plans to start work on the airport in October, though those fighting the plans say there are still some legal details that are not yet complete. There is fear that the state will send in the gendarmes, and use force to clear the ZAD - the zone à defendre - which is where building needs to start. The ZAD has been occupied for years by those trying to block the scheme, and they have now built a large shed there, which they see as a demonstration of their determination not to be moved, and a base for the future. On 8th October there will be a huge protest against the ZAD being cleared by force. People who oppose the airport plan, from all over France, will converge. All are asked to walk, bringing walking sticks. There will be the same echo of the walking sticks on the ground, as at Larzac decades ago, as the people march. People will leave their sticks in the ZAD committing themselves together to come back for them, in the event of intervention by the authorities - to defend the farmers and their future of the land and the life on it.
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Treasury Select Committee Chairman writes to Chris Grayling and Philip Hammond to question economic benefits of runway
Andrew Tyrie, Chairman of the Treasury Committee, wrote to Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Transport, on 14th September, questioning the economic case for HS2 and airport expansion. Andrew Tyrie says in his letter: "The economic case to support the conclusions of the Davies report lacks crucial information." On 27th November 2015, he tabled 15 parliamentary questions on details of the economic justification [all copied below]. These have yet to be answered 10 months later (they just had a standard holding reply from Robert Goodwill). Andrew Tyrie says: "For the fifth time I am attaching these questions. Failure to answer them will lead people either to conclude that this work has not been done - in which case it would be unacceptable for a decision to be made without the evidence to support it - or that it has been done, and gives answers that do not necessarily support the conclusions of the Davies report. I do not suggest that either of these are the case. The best way to answer these concerns is to public the information immediately. As we discussed, I have written in similar terms to the Chancellor." "Without this information, the evidence in support of any decision that the Government takes on airport capacity will be incomplete." His Parliamentary Questions focus, in particular, on Table 7.1 in the Airport Commission's Final Report, of July 2015. (Table copied below). Mr Tyrie spoke to Chris Grayling on 15 August 2016.
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CAA’s Andrew Haines says UK airspace ‘needs to be modernised’ in order to add a SE runway
In a blog by Civil Aviation Authority chief executive Andrew Haines, he says unless UK airspace is modernised, and around London in particular, "then we will not be able to use that additional runway wherever it is because the levels of congestion we have are very severe."... "Effectively the airspace structures have not been redesigned since the 1960s and 1970s. We're not using modern technology, we're using an incremental approach to flight paths which means it's not the most efficient." He admitted that flight paths and noise are a problem for communities. People living 30 or more miles from an airport can now be very negatively impacted by plane noise, due to the way flight paths are now concentrated - as part of the drive for modernisation. Airspace is more "efficient" for the aviation industry if flights follow set routes, rather than being more dispersed. Andrew Haines says the ability to "massively concentrate traffic" would be "brilliant" if that could be done over an unpopulated area (but we have no unpopulated areas in the densely populated south east). He adds that although the CAA approves modifications to airspace design, this is ultimately down to government policy, because "who should suffer most and least from noise is a political decision". But the DfT said: "We are currently reviewing existing airspace and noise policies and will consult on proposals in due course." Meaning after a runway decision. Not before.