Airport News
Below are news items relating to specific airports
Plan revealed to dismantle planes at Durham Tees Valley Airport
Durham Tees Valley Airport is set to become a centre for the storage and dismantling of unused planes, and recycling parts. Sycamore Aviation has set up its base at the struggling airport and has already begun work on taking apart a number of airliners. The airport has a long runway, enabling it to handle larger planes, and plenty of hangar space. There are apparently "huge numbers" of aircraft retiring across Europe. A Sycamore Aviation spokesman said one airline alone is likely to need to dispose of 20 jumbo jets and 20 Boeing 737 aircraft in the next 3 -4 years - an illustration of the potential scale of demand. They say that across Europe between 500 to 700 aircraft a year need to be decommissioned and currently there are just not enough facilities to meet the demand. The number of passengers using Durham Tees Valley airport has fallen steadily from around 912,000 in 2006 to 165,000 in 2012.
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Cheaper BA flights if you only have hand luggage as airline takes on budget rivals
British Airways is to follow budget airline rivals by charging less if passengers travel with just hand luggage. BA said the cheaper fares – which will initially be on flights from Gatwick Airport to 5 European destinations (Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Jersey, Tunis and Turin) – will give passengers ‘more choice’. The size of discounts will vary depending on the route but will range from £9 to £15.And BA said that holidaymakers who travel with luggage they wish to check in will not pay more to compensate for the lower ‘hand baggage only’ fares. BA is doing this in order to try to compete with Ryanair and Easyjet that charge more for passengers to check in baggage, effectively charging less for those who don’t. The director of Gatwick for BA said many holidaymakers already use the two-bag hand luggage policy. BA is looking at pleasing price-sensitive customers.
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Colin Matthews defends steep rise in Heathrow landing charges despite revenue increase – to pay shareholders
Colin Matthews has defended steep rises in landing charges that will push up air fares by saying returns to investors now have to come first, despite a leap in revenues at Heathrow in 2012, due to record passenger numbers in 2012 and higher retail sales per passenger than in 2011. Spending on the airport facilities is to slow over the next 5 years while charges rise. Colin Matthews wants to "make a fair and market return to shareholders." It s largest shareholder is the consortium led by the Spanish Ferrovial group, which bought BAA for £10bn in 2006, although it has sold down its former majority holding to just over a third of shares. The sovereign wealth funds of Qatar, Singapore and China own a total of over 40%, with the rest held by Canadian pension fund CPDQ and private investment firm Alinda Capital Partners. Investors had spent £11bn on Heathrow since 2003 and would go elsewhere without returns. The airport paid a dividend of £240m last year, its first since the 2006 takeover.
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Bed protest. Hertfordshire & Bedfordshire residents call for a cut in Luton airport night flights
A group of protestors arrived at Luton Borough Council on 15th February to deliver a bed signed by people who are fed up with night noise from Luton Airport. The BANN (Beds Against Night Noise) protest was given good media coverage and made the point that it’s not only Hertfordshire which suffers noise and disturbance – plenty of residents in Bedfordshire are also woken up by late night arrivals, cargo planes and early morning departures. One of the protesters said the PR spin in Luton airport's Master Plan claimed they would ”consult” the public, and they were taking noise seriously by adding 6 new noise mitigations. However, those so-called mitigations would only affect a fraction of 1% of the total flights – and Luton plans to double night flights between 10pm and midnight and start the morning departure rush at 5am, which is utterly unacceptable. Local people are now demanding that there is legislation to control night flights at Luton in the same way as at other London airports. There is currently a petition to significantly reduce night flights at Luton, not increase them.
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Colin Matthews bothered Heathrow might be eclipsed by Dubai and Istanbul
Colin Matthews, head of Heathrow, believes the number of hub airports in Europe will in due course reduce from its current 5 down to 3. This will happen as long-haul air traffic moves to hubs in the Middle East, which are better geographically located than the UK. Airports in Dubai and Istanbul have huge projects to increase capacity, as they are in the right locations. These emerging hub airports will “over time” divert traffic from Europe. Colin Matthew says this will intensify competition between Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Madrid. For some reason, instead of logically therefore not needing larger airports here, he implies that it means the UK has to compete fiercely to remain a huge European hub. He does say “The question at some stage will be not so much shall we have two [hubs] but how on earth are we going to be sure we have one at all? There are 27 member states in the EU, most of them do not have a hub. “It is not a birthright that we have this connectivity.”
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Bristol Airport flies more Welsh passengers than Cardiff
Provisional figures for 2012 indicate that more passengers from Wales use Bristol Airport than Cardiff. Over 1 million passengers used Cardiff in 2012, down about 200,000 in a year, with nearly 6 million at Bristol. The statistics suggest the scale of the task facing the Welsh government in improving Cardiff Airport's fortunes as ministers finalise a deal to buy it. It is estimated that it amounts to the equivalent of about 1.1m passengers over a year flying from Bristol, having come from or going to places in Wales. The Welsh government is expected to take over Cardiff Airport over the next few months after a slump in passenger numbers from a peak of 2m in 2007. It is negotiating a price with Spanish owners Abertis and carrying out various checks and balances on the airport's finances. The Mayor of Bristol says both airports have their problems, and it would be better if they could work together.
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Luton local residents say “Enough is Enough” on aircraft noise – and do not accept the planned expansion
Luton airport has a consultation - that ends on 18th February - into their planning application, to almost double the number of passenger, from around 10 mppa now to 18mppa before 2030. The extra flights would mean a lot more noise for those living locally under flight paths. One of the local residents' groups, LANAG, has now submitted its response to the consultation, and say that while local residents support the desire for Luton to have a top quality airport, the airport already has twice the number of people affected by noise than there were in 2002 and 4 times the number of aircraft movements at night. They therefore say, “Enough is Enough” and do not accept the increases in aircraft movements and noise that would result from expansion. LANAG wants no more people affected by noise than currently , and say there must be a plan to take 2,800 people out of an environment that, according to the WHO is deleterious to health - due to noise levels.
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Gatwick Airport wants freedom from regulation on prices by the CAA
With Heathrow and Stansted, Gatwick is one of only 3 UK airports that is subject to a price regime set by the CAA. It is arguing that should be allowed to negotiate landing charges directly with airlines, rather than being regulated, through entering into individual commercial agreements with airlines. Gatwick says such deals, which would be struck under a legally-binding framework, could incentivise airlines to offer more routes. Gatwick says even for airlines that didn’t strike commercial agreements, charges would still be lower, increasing by 1.3% above the RPI over the next 7 years. By comparison, under continued regulation, charges would increase 3.3% above RPI over 5 years - which would mean landing charges rising from £8.80 per passenger in 2014, to £11.45 by 2018/19. But Virgin Atlantic is not keen on the idea, and nor is easyJet. Virgin says "The CAA must continue to regulate to ensure that Gatwick delivers services our passengers need at a price which is good value for money."
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Cross-Party letter sent to Transport Secretary – asking for final report of the Davies Commission to be published earlier
A sizeable group of MPs, peers and campaigns have joined with the leaders of nine local authorities to call on the Government to bring forward the publication date of the final report of the Airports Commission, headed by Sir Howard Davies. They have written to Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, asking for the report to be published well before the 2015 General Election. The scheduled date for publication is currently July 2015, two months after the Election. They are also calling on Sir Howard Davies to “lay out very clearly the direction of his thinking” in his interim report which is due at the end of this year. In the letter they argue that such a lengthy period of uncertainty is not at all helpful to businesses seeking to make investment decisions or indeed the wider economy of the UK. Also that the residents of West London deserve to know what implications the Commission’s recommendations will have on their lives.
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Heathrow to delay 2nd phase of work on Terminal 2 till around 2019 or later
Heathrow will seek to complete and open the first phase of Terminal 2 by 2014, enabling it to close Terminal 1. But Heathrow Airport has confirmed it is delaying the construction of the £2.5bn 2nd phase of its Terminal 2 building in its latest 5 year business plan (Q6). This means building work starting at the end of the 2014 - 2019 period. The business plan says Heathrow does not now expect to complete the project until “late in Q7” – meaning it could be as late as 2024 before the building is complete. In 2010 BAA said the building, which will add capacity for a further 10 million passengers a year, would be complete by 2019. Heathrow Airport still expects to spend £3bn over the Q6 period, with investment reducing year on year over the period, from £660m in 2014/15 to £464m in 2018/19. “The next quinquennium at BAA will largely be about asset replacement rather than major new projects." Launching the investment plans, Colin Matthews said Heathrow envisaged passenger numbers increasing from just under 70m now to around 72.6m by 2018-19 (compared with DfT forecasts of 75m by 2020 - see below). So no rapid need for space for 10 million more passengers.