Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
Local survey says 90% would use Doncaster Robin Hood airport if more destinations were offered
The small airports in the vicinity of Manchester fear they are losing out, as more passengers prefer to fly from Manchester. The local press in Yorkshire reports that Manchester continues to be the first choice airport for most travellers from South Yorkshire, followed by East Midlands airport. More than 66% of South Yorkshire flyers say they use Manchester “often” or “very often” while 25% said the same of East Midlands, while around 15% used Heathrow on a similar basis. Just one in 14 said they used Robin Hood often or very often – a similar proportion to those using Leeds Bradford and fewer than use Stansted or Liverpool John Lennon Airports. However, 90% said they would like to use Robin Hood if it had flights to a wider range of destinations.Little regional airports hope travellers would prefer them to larger airports, particularly to destinations in Europe – because that cuts the time they spend in the airport. Only 10% were ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the range of destinations served by Robin Hood airport. Around 30% said the problem was lack of accessibility and connectivity with poor public transport and an inadequate bus service. Road access improvements from the M18 are planned.
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Liverpool John Lennon Airport aiming to win over 1m people who prefer to fly out of Manchester
Liverpool John Lennon Airport wants to win over the 1 million Merseysiders who currently fly from Manchester Airport each year.The loss making airport said it was “absolutely” certain that it will secure new bank banking facilities before the March 31 deadline. The ambition to lure local passengers away from Manchester was part of an overall strategy aimed at restoring passenger growth at Liverpool airport, which lost over 1 million passengers in 2013, compared to 2011. Liverpool airport says it has conducted market research that shows Merseysiders would prefer to fly from Liverpool rather than Manchester, if flights were available. But they are not. “People said they wanted to keep money in the Liverpool economy” (by taking cheap flights abroad to spend their holiday money elsewhere??). In recent years, JLA has lost market share to Manchester as its rival began targeting no-frills airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair that have traditionally been Liverpool’s biggest customers. Liverpool wants more low cost destinations. Their accounts show they made a pre-tax losses of £7.1m in the year to March 2013 and another £6.5m the previous year. Earlier this week, Norwegian Airlines said it was withdrawing its route to Copenhagen.
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Wandsworth Council vows to fight Heathrow night flight threat
Wandsworth Council says it has vowed to fight plans by the Airports Commission to increase the number of night flights over London. The Government’s second stage consultation on a new night flight regime proposes no significant changes to the existing rules despite new evidence on the health and social impacts of sleep deprivation caused by aircraft noise. The consultation documents say the Airports Commission will make recommendations for night flights in its final report in 2015. Flightpath communities in Battersea and Putney already suffer an average 16 early morning arrivals before 6am. Theycomplain bitterly about these pre 6am flights (classified as night flights) and suffer from sleep deprivation and fatigue which affects their work and undermines their quality of life. The DfT's own impact assessments link prolonged exposure to night flights to serious health problems including cardiovascular disease, strokes and hypertension. The Commission's first report uses the outdated ‘57 decibel’ Leq metric to define aircraft noise impacts. That has infuriated noise campaigners who claim it grossly underestimates a flightpath noise footprint, and does not properly represent the noise experienced. The Commission will now look at some more effective metrics
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Stewart Wingate tells Scottish business leaders a 2nd Gatwick runway would be better for Scottish travellers
Gatwick airport is working hard on its PR to win support for its runway bid. It has recruited a number of agencies to help with this, and is reputed to be spending some £10 million on its public relations. It is lobbying London councils that oppose expansion at Heathrow, on the principle that "my enemy's enemy is my friend." Now Stewart Wingate has told a meeting of business people in Scotland that expanding Gatwick could be better for the Scottish economy than expanding Heathrow. He is announcing a new study into airport expansion and Scottish connectivity, commissioned through Northpoint Aviation, that considers levels of access and demand today, and the impact of expanding Gatwick on Scotland. Gatwick plans to return to Scotland in due course, with more details and to lobby for support. Stuart Patrick, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said: “We are working hard to ensure that capacity constraints in the South-east don't limit our future ability to access such vital national and international markets, and in the short-term this remains an issue." Spending more on PR, Gatwick's media relations manager, Heather Griffiths, said consumer perceptions were an "important strand" in the broader comms effort on their runway bid.
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Better noise metrics than the discredited Leq to be used by Airports Commission in appraising short-listed runway schemes
In a blog, John Stewart says that at long last - and not before time - the Airports Commission is now considering improving on the Leq system. In the past, aircraft noise has been measured and averaged out, to give an Leq figure. This has been convenient to the aviation industry, as it gives an unrepresentative reflection of the reality of the noise, as experienced by those living below flight paths and being disturbed. For example, by averaging noise events over a period it is possible to claim that one Concorde flying overhead is the same, in noise terms, as having a Boeing 757 flying overhead, every 2 minutes, for almost 4 hours. Clearly that is not a sensible noise metric to use, when deciding to inflict more aircraft noise on thousands of people. The 57Leq contours have always been used to produce contours, in theory indicating where the noise is "annoying". Now the Commission will be also using other metrics – and require the promoters of the short-listed schemes to use them. One is Lden, where noise is measured over a 12 hour day; a 4 hour evening; and an 8 hour night; with 5 and 10 decibels being added to the evening and night levels respectively to reflect the lower background noise levels at these times. And a 54 db LAeq metric. And N70 – which measures the number of aircraft above 70 decibels passing overhead.
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Campaigners target airport investors to warn them off risky investment in politically undeliverable 3rd Heathrow runway
Heathrow's investors are to be targeted as part of a campaign by residents, MPs and local authorities who argue a 3rd runway in west London will be “politically undeliverable”. Campaigners will highlight the potential risk to shareholders of spending millions of pounds developing detailed plans for a new runway, when they are likely to face the same level of fierce and determined opposition that led to a previous scheme being ditched in 2010. MPs, local authorities and anti-Heathrow campaigners have met to draw up a plan of attack. These include Zac Goldsmith MP, John McDonnell MP, representatives of Richmond, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Wandsworth councils and HACAN. The main shareholders at Heathrow now are Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial (25%), Qatar Holding LLC (20.00%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (13.29%), the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (11.88%), Alinda Capital Partners (11.18%), China Investment Corporation (10%) and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) (8.65%). The 3rd runway is also strongly opposed by Boris Johnson. Daniel Moylan, the Mayor's chief aviation adviser, said: “The Mayor shares HACAN’s view that the expansion of Heathrow is neither acceptable nor politically deliverable.” A report by KPMG for the Airports Commission indicated the funding problems for either a new Heathrow, or a Gatwick, runway.
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Taxpayers to cover Heathrow’s £160 million contribution to Crossrail – CAA claims Heathrow doesn’t need more passengers coming by rail
Plans for the £14.8 billion Crossrail line across London originally envisaged - in 2008 - a £230 million contribution from Heathrow, to reflect the benefit it is expected to gain from the link to central London, Maidenhead, and Brentwood. But now it emerges that the taxpayer must cover a £160 million shortfall, which Heathrow will now not pay. Now Heathrow will only pay £70 million. [Heathrow is pushing hard for a 3rd runway - surely if it got that, it would need all the rail passengers from Crossrail that it can get]. The CAA has said that with the airport already running at or near capacity, (it is not at capacity for terminal space, only runway space) Crossrail would deliver no net benefit in terms of additional passengers. After the CAA set aside a provisional pot of £100 million to pay towards Crossrail, the DfT lowered its proposal to £137 million, and now down to £70 million. The National Audit Office said the shortfall means that the DfT’s contribution to the project will rise from £4.8 billion to almost £5 billion; but this remains inside the £5.2 billion set aside in case it failed to secure sufficient funding from private sources. Crossrail is now half built and is due to open by December 2019. It will run from Maidenhead, via Heathrow, out to Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east.
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Gatwick new runway would increase likelihood of more local flooding along River Mole
A paper has been prepared for GACC by the distinguished naturalist and author Jeremy Early. It shows why Gatwick - and towns downstream - are liable to flood. And that the situation would be made worse by the construction of a new runway and associated infrastructure. Jeremy points out that Gatwick has areas of higher land in its vicinity, which increase the amount of rainfall that has to be drained away. In addition the huge amount of development locally consisting of impermeable surfaces, makes the flooding in several parts of Crawley, other local villages, and at Gatwick Airport understandable. Jeremy points out that Crawley is built on a floodplain and the Environment Agency has said: ‘The decision to site Gatwick Airport across 3 watercourses means that it is vulnerable to flooding from all 3 watercourses as well as local drainage. Run-off from main airfield paving flows by gravity to a storage pond and is then discharged by pumps directly to the River Mole." They consider the chance of the North Terminal flooding again to be high (about 8% chance). The report considers it misguided to plan to use 900 hectares of greenfield site to create a 2nd runway involving a vast quantity of impermeable surfaces, not to mention associated infrastructure, roads, homes etc.
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Birmingham airport hands out £13 million share dividend to Birmingham City Council
Birmingham Airport managed to handle 9,119,709 passengers in 2013, which was the highest since 2008 and up + 2.3% compared to 2012. The 2013 number is still around 4.7% lower than the 2008 peak, but has been growing slowly since 2010. Most passengers continue to be on leisure trips, including long haul leisure, for example to Barbados and Gambia (those "seeking some winter sun over the Christmas break"). The airport hopes its runway extension will open during 2014, enabling flights by larger planes to long haul destinations. More passengers travel out from the area, on holiday trips, than travel in though the airport wants to attract more visitors from South-east Asia. Birmingham City Council, with 6 other West Midlands local authorities, owns 49% of the airport and has been handed a £13 million dividend after the airport had a "successful" year and reappraised its finances after the imminent completion of the runway extension. This will help fund the £5 million budget black hole in Birmingham’s 39 leisure centres and swimming pools. Birmingham and the other councils had earlier agreed to sacrifice dividend payments to help fund the £33 million runway scheme, and are now set to be rewarded for their generosity.
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Arguments for and against a 2nd Gatwick runway, with benefits exaggerated and problems minimised by some proponents
In a long article covering a number of issues about Gatwick airport and its short-listed runway proposal, the local paper - the Argos - puts some of the points in favour of, and against, the runway. Those in favour of the airport are trying to play down the number of new houses that would be needed in the area, saying the estimate of 40,000 is too high. They claim there will not be as large a noise problem as there would be at Heathrow, and that there would be huge economic benefits. Opponents of the new runway, led by GACC (the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign) say that expanding Gatwick would be bad news for everyone within a 20-mile radius of the airport, and would affect around 18,000 homes. "... a new runway is not just a strip of concrete but would mean twice as many aircraft in the sky, twice the pollution, twice the climate change damage, twice the noise, and new flight paths over peaceful areas." In making Gatwick larger than Heathrow is today, it would lead to the urbanisation of much of Sussex. A new runway would mean more people coming to live in Sussex, more new companies, existing firms expanding ... but "for most ordinary people living in the area at present there would be no economic benefit, just longer queues at road junctions, longer queues at the doctors and at the hospitals, larger classes for their children, more noise, and fewer green fields."