General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
Keith Taylor MEP: “We don’t need a new runway at Gatwick – or Heathrow, or Stansted or anywhere else for that matter”
Keith Taylor, the Green Party MEP, has set out clearly why no new runway is needed. The Airports Commission will shortly publish their consultation options, for runway plans at Heathrow and Gatwick. Keith says the extensive evidence against there being a need for a new south east runway is being ignored. The massive advertising and PR budgets by the airports are attempting to persuade that a new runway is vital is described as a con. While in theory the Commission was set up to establish if there was a need for a runway, in reality it has just been a process of making the decision where to build one more politically acceptable. It has not been an issue of "whether" as it should have been - but just "where." Keith comments: "... it seems the Commission’s sole purpose has become to choose where expansion will go despite the very strong existing evidence against all airport expansion." People in the UK already fly more than almost any other nation. Economic claims of the benefits of a new runway and claims about jobs created are also grossly exaggerated. The aviation industry is perpetrating a massive hoax, for their own purposes.
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Monarch Airlines sold by Mantegazza family to Greybull Capital, trying to make a go of it
Monarch has been trying to compete against easyJet and Ryanair. It has already axed 700 jobs out of its 3,000 employees and reduce its aircraft fleet to 34 from 42. The airline will now re-focus solely on short-haul European flights and ditch charter flights. Monarch has now agreed a rescue deal that will result in Switzerland’s Mantegazza dynasty, who started the business with just two aircraft in Luton in 1968, selling up completely. The family is impatient with the airline’s financial troubles after Monarch asked for a third bailout in July despite already injecting £75m into the business in 2011, just two years after putting £45m into the business. Investment firm Greybull Capital has now agreed to pump £125m of permanent capital and liquidity facilities into Monarch. Greybull sees the deal as a "long-term investment", and will own 90% of the airline. The remaining 10% is held by Monarch’s pension fund, which has a reported to have a deficit of more than £300m. Monarch had some 6,248,160 passengers in 2013 compared with Ryanair at 81,400,000 and EasyJet at 61,332,800.
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Will there soon be too much low cost airline capacity on core European city routes?
An interesting article by Aviation Economics looks at the European low cost airlines, and whether they will be able to keep up their relentless growth. It says these airlines are trying to both lower seat costs and offer greater frequency to some destinations, for business travellers. They have needed to do more on business travel, “as leisure markets reach saturation.” This is likely to lead to massive overcapacity on core city routes as large numbers of new aircraft are delivered over the next decade. EasyJet and Ryanair are both ordering new planes that can fit in slightly higher numbers of passengers, and these will continue to arrive past 2020. Aviation Economics comments that there are a limited number of city pairs in Europe that can sustain twice-daily frequency with a 200-seat aircraft – which means about 250,000 passengers a year at 85% load factor. Currently there are only 665 routes in Europe with traffic of over 250,000 passengers per year. But Ryanair and easyJet combined will have a fleet of more than 800 aircraft by 2019, which may be more than there are profitable routes …
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Thousands fear compulsory purchase of their land, and eviction, for massive Taiwan aerotropolis + 3rd runway
A huge airport city, or Aerotropolis, is planned around Taiwan Taoyan airport. However, its construction needs a great deal of land (about 3,000 hectares), and that many thousands of people (about 12,000 households) are moved. Residents who may face forced eviction, for inadequate compensation, have been battling against the threat since last year. Some of the land is earmarked for a new runway – the airport already has two runways, and only about 30 million passengers per year. One person, in tears, facing expropriation said: “My family has been on the plot of land on which our two-story house now stands since my great-grandparents’ time. We got married in this house, we raised our children in this house ….We want to grow old in the house, and we want our children to get married and have their children in the house, too.” People question why good quality farmland would be destroyed, and whether corruption in high places has been a reason for the airport plans.
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Biggin Hill and Oxford airports sue RAF Northolt over its expansion into commercial private jet flights
Two small UK airports that depend on business jets, Oxford and Biggin Hill, are suing the military airport, RAF Northolt because it has expanded into civilian flights. It has done this to make money for the MoD, after their budget cuts. They claim that, because Northolt is operated by the MoD and therefore taxpayer funded, it has an unfair competition advantage. The expansion at Northolt also affects the number of business jet flights that Luton and Farnborough can get, and their flight numbers have fallen in recent years. In May 2013 Northolt said it would begin to more than double the number of civilian flights from a self-imposed cap of 7,000 to 17,500 by 2016. Of that total, military movements will remain at about 5,500 a year. Northolt is the closest private jet airport to central London. The MD of Biggin Hill said: “We, like Oxford, like Farnborough, have all been through a very tough time and they’ve pulled the rug from underneath us. It’s not a level playing field.” They claim Northolt has about 15% of the London market, and are cheaper as they don't have to meet the same safety standards as commercial airports.
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Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports sold to Ferrovial and Macquaire, by HAH, in £1bn deal
Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports have been sold by Heathrow Airport Holdings (HAH) in a £1 billion deal. All three will now be owned by a consortium formed by Spanish firm Ferrovial and Australia-based Macquarie, and managed locally. The sale is expected to be completed in January 2015. Ferrovial already part-owns Heathrow, and holds a 25% stake in HAH, which was previously known as BAA. So from January 2015, HAH will only operate Heathrow, while some years back it owned and ran seven airports. Heathrow itself is 25% owned by Ferrovial with other stakes controlled by investment vehicles from Qatar, Quebec, Singapore, the US, and China. (Nothing English). By passenger number in the UK, Glasgow ranks 8th, Aberdeen 14th and Southampton 18th. The airports are not anticipating any particular changes due to the sale. The uncertainty over ownership has not been helpful for the airports, but the investors will be wanting a return on their billion pounds.
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Eurocontrol publishes airport environmental guidance – for consultation
Eurocontrol is the European agency dealing with European airspace matters, funded by European governments. It oversees airspace matters, including those in the UK. It has now produced a very European, written-by-committee-of-bureaucrats sort of document, (Specification for Collaborative Environmental Management (CEM)) on guidance to airports on managing noise and carbon emissions. It is very guarded, and contains a large number of repetitions of the words "may", "shall", "should," to "monitor and assess." Its aim is to "formalize collaboration among “core” stakeholders—airport operators, airlines and air navigation service providers " - and try to set out basics of communication with communities. But Eurcontrol said: "....is it is voluntary. There is no enforcement by Eurocontrol or the European Union." But while voluntary, the specification is an official Eurocontrol document, for consultation till 29th November. It is aware of the noise issues affecting a range of communities and trade-offs between communities, and between noise and emissions.
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Heathrow article implies health of Scottish langoustine market depends on 3rd runway ….
An article by Bloomberg, put out as part of Heathrow's attempts to lobby for a new runway, says (I kid you not) that we need a new runway because people have to be able to export Scottish langoustines more easily to Spain and the rest of the world. The claim the Scottish fishermen, who can make plenty of money out of the crustaceans, can't get the flight connections from Heathrow for their exports. They claim this high value product is vital for the UK economy, however unsustainable it is to air freight shell fish half way around the globe. However, the Scottish langoustine exporters have managed quite adequately to use connections via Schiphol - from Inverness - rather than Heathrow. Heathrow cut many of its flights to regional airports, as more profit can be made from long haul flights elsewhere. The Bloomberg article is largely written for them by Heathrow, so trots out a lot of half truths and spin. Not impressive for the local people who have recently had their peace destroyed by a concentrated flight path trial - one symptom of which was the meeting attended by 1,000 + people in Ascot, leaving Heathrow in no doubt at all about their opposition to a new runway.
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MPs call for improved rail links to south-east airports
A cross-party group of MPs has urged the government to improve public transport links to airports in the south-east. The MPs, including Dame Tessa Jowell, Margaret Hodge, Zac Goldsmith and Julian Huppert, say excessive car journeys and the consequent pollution as one of the biggest barriers to the future sustainability of airports. [This is the carbon emissions of airports themselves, rather the emissions of the flights they facilitate, which is a massively higher number]. Tim Yeo and Caroline Spelman, Darren Johnson, and John Stewart, have also signed it, but Darren Johnson stressed that his endorsement of the letter did not imply conditional support for airport expansion. Heathrow is very well aware that it cannot build a new runway, unless the level of local air pollution (largely from road traffic) is hugely cut. It is currently close to the legal maximum, and cannot legally be increased. Heathrow and Gatwick want better rail links, to keep their surface transport emissions down. But those links would largely be paid for by public funding.
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Ryanair has been ordered to repay illegal state aid to Germany… AGAIN
Ryanair has been hit with its second illegal state-aid bill in two weeks after it was ordered to repay €300,000 to the German government. The European Commission ordered the money be returned due to Ryanair’s setup at the Alternburg-Nobitz regional airport about 42km south of Leipzig, where Ryanair was the only airline between 2003 and 2011. Ryanair is fighting the order, saying this is outside the rules, and it no longer flies from the airport. The European Commission said “certain service and marketing agreements” between the Alternburg-Nobitz airport manager, Ryanair and its marketing offshoot AMS gave the Irish carrier an unfair advantage to the tune of around €300,000. The contracts had no chance of returning a profit for the airport even in the long term, but they gave Ryanair an unfair economic advantage. Another EC decision earlier this month told Ryanair to pay back €500,000 to the German government for its contract at the Zweibrücken Airport, which amounted to illegal state aid.