Manchester Airport Transformation Programme

[EGCC_MAN]

Fair enough, it does work 90 percent of the time but as soon as 23r is out of use its buggered. Having to backtrack doesn't work

To me it just seems a waste, they battled to get a second runway, and have ended up with one they can't fully use, with no plans of making it fully usable.

But 05L/23R is available almost permanently, barring for planned maintenance which takes place during quiet night hours when 05R/23L can cope with remaining demand just fine. Unplanned outages of 23R account for only a handful of hours per year. You don't invest multiple millions in a new taxiway just to provide resilience against that possibility, particularly since 05R/23L keeps at least a good proportion of movements flowing until 05L/23R can be re-opened.

In order for a parallel taxiway alongside 05R/23L to be justified, it would have to materially increase the movements capacity of the airport. But it wouldn't do that. Provided that 23L is always the runway designated for departures during westerly ops, and 05R is always the runway designated for arrivals during easterly ops, then that runway handles an optimal number of movements per hour. That is all that matters. If flexibility of mode doesn't increase movements capacity (and it doesn't), then why build a very expensive new taxiway crossing the River Bollin? If MAN has that sort of money lying around, they need to prioritise an apron extension and increasing capacity at T3, not constructing a white elephant taxiway.

 

[BlueManc]

But 05L/23R is available almost permanently, barring for planned maintenance which takes place during quiet night hours when 05R/23L can cope with remaining demand just fine. Unplanned outages of 23R account for only a handful of hours per year. You don't invest multiple millions in a new taxiway just to provide resilience against that possibility, particularly since 05R/23L keeps at least a good proportion of movements flowing until 05L/23R can be re-opened.

In order for a parallel taxiway alongside 05R/23L to be justified, it would have to materially increase the movements capacity of the airport. But it wouldn't do that. Provided that 23L is always the runway designated for departures during westerly ops, and 05R is always the runway designated for arrivals during easterly ops, then that runway handles an optimal number of movements per hour. That is all that matters. If flexibility of mode doesn't increase movements capacity (and it doesn't), then why build a very expensive new taxiway crossing the River Bollin? If MAN has that sort of money lying around, they need to prioritise an apron extension and increasing capacity at T3, not constructing a white elephant taxiway.

Think this is a good example - Has anyone ever seen anything use taxiway Y at Frankfurt? That's the parallel to 18/36 - the one that vansishes into the forest.

 

[Rudney]

But 05L/23R is available almost permanently, barring for planned maintenance which takes place during quiet night hours when 05R/23L can cope with remaining demand just fine. Unplanned outages of 23R account for only a handful of hours per year. You don't invest multiple millions in a new taxiway just to provide resilience against that possibility, particularly since 05R/23L keeps at least a good proportion of movements flowing until 05L/23R can be re-opened.

In order for a parallel taxiway alongside 05R/23L to be justified, it would have to materially increase the movements capacity of the airport. But it wouldn't do that. Provided that 23L is always the runway designated for departures during westerly ops, and 05R is always the runway designated for arrivals during easterly ops, then that runway handles an optimal number of movements per hour. That is all that matters. If flexibility of mode doesn't increase movements capacity (and it doesn't), then why build a very expensive new taxiway crossing the River Bollin? If MAN has that sort of money lying around, they need to prioritise an apron extension and increasing capacity at T3, not constructing a white elephant taxiway.

Hear hear!

 

[BLB777]

That's fair enough I was just going by reports so nice to actually know up to date plans. How about movements then is that predicted to go up from 61 per hour, or is that all the airfield and runways can do no matter what works are done?
Thanks for the replies anyway.

 

[mullion]

I think the max is 52 per hour

 

[Scottie Dog]

Here are the limits as shown in the ACL Initial Report for Summer 24:

 

[BLB777]

Here are the limits as shown in the ACL Initial Report for Summer 24:

View attachment 30232

View attachment 30233

Brilliant, thank you.

For those who are familiar with acl I apologise if this comes across as a silly question, but I'm still learning about it. So if you wanted to find the daily maximum capacity would it be a case of just adding the numbers together? And also r60 is that restricted to 60 or does it mean something else. Again sorry if its a silly questions just trying not to make assumptions.

 

[Scottie Dog]

You raise a very good question there Ben. I didn't know the answer to your question however, having now made a call, I can confirm that the R60 refers to the number of Runway movements in 60 minutes.

See post #2615 at https://forums4airports.com/threads/2724/page-131 for the full a link to the ACL report.

I hope that helps.

SD

 

[Rudney]

Brilliant, thank you.

For those who are familiar with acl I apologise if this comes across as a silly question, but I'm still learning about it. So if you wanted to find the daily maximum capacity would it be a case of just adding the numbers together? And also r60 is that restricted to 60 or does it mean something else. Again sorry if its a silly questions just trying not to make assumptions.

Yep, in this instance just tally up the declared capacity numbers across the day by clock hour. R60 is the Runway 60mins constraint so how many movements can be coordinated across a 60min period. Hope that helps.

You raise a very good question there Ben. I didn't know the answer to your question however, having now made a call, I can confirm that the R60 refers to the number of Runway movements in 60 minutes.

See post #2615 at https://forums4airports.com/threads/2724/page-131 for the full a link to the ACL report.

I hope that helps.

SD

You beat me to it SD!

 

[BLB777]

Thank you both, appreciate it.

 

[BLB777]

So I did some adding up and comparing Manchester max movements per day 1057 and gatwick 1086 which is extremely close. However when you look at arrivals and departures and add them together, for Man you 650 arrivals and 650 departures totalling 1300. Whereas with gatwick its 582 arrivals and 598 departures giving a total of 1180. How come those figures when added separately don't equal ACL's total?

 

[BLB777]

Start of UTC hour 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 15hr (05-19) 17hr (05-21) Total Limit 21​ 56​ 58​ 61​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 57​ 58​ 59​ 57​ 57​ 40​ 31​ 26​ 17​ 862​ 933​ Arrival Limit 15​ 30​ 30​ 33​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 33​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 28​ 26​ 26​ 17​ 478​ 521​ Departure Limit 15​ 42​ 37​ 35​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 32​ 34​ 32​ 32​ 26​ 20​ 15​ 15​ 500​ 546​ ARR-DEP Flex: 9​ 16​ 9​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 6​ 7​ 7​ 7​ 14​ 15​ 15​ 15​ 115​ 144​

Managed to do some digging and answered my own question. Seems to be something ACL does on purpose. This was stated in the Gatwack capacity declaration "ACL recommends capacity flexes to aid coordination".
Interesting though with those figures I can see in a decade or so Manchester being the same as if not busier than Gatwick is today. That's some growth

 

[David_itl]

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/la...-following-hs2-north-cancellation-13-02-2024/

no HS2 means now forecasting "only" 50 million passengers by 2040 and not 60 million. Why did I have in my head that the projection was for 45 million passengers

 

[Seasider]

Because that is probably a more realistic figure?

 

[David_itl]

I had never seen any publication state the 60 million passenger goal that seems have been plucked out of thin air.

For example, this article from 10th December 2015 when the TP was submitted for planning application goes nowhere near that number 10 years after the "presumed" 2040 total
https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...-news/new-images-shows-possible-high-10582851


"By 2050, it’s hoped 55m passengers will use the hub every year, more than doubling the current 23m."

 

[mullion]

Its more than 23M at present, looks like 30M by year end

 

[Scottie Dog]

Its more than 23M at present, looks like 30M by year end

Just for accuracy the total passenger numbers (including transit ) for the year ended 31st December 2023 was 28,309,612

 

[lfc84]

Every time I tried to transit I was told airside transfers was shut. So I didn't bother booking via MAN

 

[KARFA]

i think the airside connections are now open, although they were shut for a long time from 2020 to 2023. but yes for inter terminal i think you are still forced landside. perhaps not ideal overall, but not exactly a deal breaker.

what connections were you looking at?

 

[Statto]

I had never seen any publication state the 60 million passenger goal that seems have been plucked out of thin air.

For example, this article from 10th December 2015 when the TP was submitted for planning application goes nowhere near that number 10 years after the "presumed" 2040 total
https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...-news/new-images-shows-possible-high-10582851


"By 2050, it’s hoped 55m passengers will use the hub every year, more than doubling the current 23m."

A better way to think about passenger targets that are published by all airports is to look at what it
means for their market share and the implied size of the overall UK market

Over a 40 year period, Manchester has very consistently been around 10% market share of the UK total. The highest has been 11.7% in 1994 which is I guess before LBA and LPL started to up their game a bit, and the lowest was 8.4% in 2010, the aftermath of the financial crisis.

So, MAN at 50m passengers with a 10% market share, means the UK total will need to be 500m. It was 272m in 2023. UK was at 200m in 2003, so +72m passengers added in last 20 years.

Of course the other scenario is that UK growth gets no where near 500m, but MAN's market share increases significantly beyond the long term average. 50m passengers at 14% market share, would imply a UK total of 360m ish.

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