The Transport Secretary of State will make the announcement at 12.30 on Tuesday 25 October.
 
The whole thing has been a farce.

I know everyone wants regional airports to grow, as do I, but we all know the only suitable option is Heathrow. It's the biggest airport in Europe for a reason, it's the golden nugget every airline wants, even Easyjet said it wants access when the runways built.

Let's not forget regional airports will still grow, I don't believe LHR will be the big nail in the coffin people expect. If airlines want to serve Birmingham or Manchester, they will, just like they have done throughout the last few years. Yes, there may be a few casualties, it would be naive to say there wouldn't, but, this whole debate has not been about the South a East, it's been about LHR and LHR only. No other airport stood a chance.
 
When retaining the UK hub status became part of the remit for the Commission (probably written by some Civil Servant?) rather than UK airport capacity or even capacity in the SE, the conclusion was inevitable. But despite the cost, and debatable size of benefits?

Personally, I think the airport that could suffer most is Gatwick, if BA and VS move some more long haul ops to LHR.
However, if easyjet were to start a sizeable base at LHR, it's not clear what the moving round of a/c from other bases would involve. Airlines don't have unlimited resources in equipment. That same argument about where airlines place expensive equipment is one that could hold back growth at airports like BHX and MAN on long haul. If R3 happens though, it's likely going to be a minimum of 10 years and probably several years longer before it actually opens. It's up to BHX and MAN to make the most of opportunities in the meantime.

Mind you, Davies didn't exactly cover himself in glory with a forecast for LGW for 2030 of a pax figure reached this year.
I've not rechecked the quote but it's been fairly widely reported.
 
It's not about hub status it's about the billions pouring into a money pit the size of the grand canyon.

And who knows what the airline industry will look like in 15 years. We are making decisons as though this will open next week! It won't.

I thought we were "all in it together" re austerity but the billions gushing into the South East is absolutely obscene !

The Guardian have quoted £80 billions for; Elizabethan Line
Crossrail 2
Thameslink
BankUndergnd
Waterloo
Notwithstanding the Olympic Village and of course everybody North of Berkhampstead is still awaiting a link to the Channel Tunnel.

Londoners kept that one to themselves.

Heathrow is now in deficit re it's pension to the tune of 000s of millions but somehow still managed to find £2 billion yes thats
£2 Thousand Million for shareholder dividends And this at a time it paid a puny £53m Corporation Tax.

£2 Thousand Million
£53 million

That my friends is 3.5% of its profits. AND this from a company wholly owned by interests in Spain Singapore and Qatar not London.

I have no issue if Heathrow want a new runway BUT they can underwrite all of it AND bloody well pay a significant percentage toward the additional infastructure to make it work rather than bleed the rest of us dry in terms of the public finances !
 
The whole thing has been a farce.

I know everyone wants regional airports to grow, as do I, but we all know the only suitable option is Heathrow. It's the biggest airport in Europe for a reason, it's the golden nugget every airline wants, even Easyjet said it wants access when the runways built.

Let's not forget regional airports will still grow, I don't believe LHR will be the big nail in the coffin people expect. If airlines want to serve Birmingham or Manchester, they will, just like they have done throughout the last few years. Yes, there may be a few casualties, it would be naive to say there wouldn't, but, this whole debate has not been about the South a East, it's been about LHR and LHR only. No other airport stood a chance.

Agree fully with your point, expanding LHR is a no brainer and FWIW I can't think of 1 route being flown from a regional UK airport that would go when R3 opens. Call me an extremist but in reality LHR needs R4 and it should be signed off at the same time.
 
I laid out what I believe to be the options going forward on a Gatwick thread with regards to expansion there. Realistically there are 4 options to provide more capacity in the South East:

1). We desire a hub airport --> expand Heathrow
2). We desire a hub airport --> build a new hub airport and close Heathrow
3). We do not desire a hub airport --> close Heathrow (huge noise and pollution blight) and expand Gatwick, Stansted & Luton
4). We do not need anymore capacity --> build no new runways

With the exception of number 4, all will require some sort of government funding.

A new hub airport has been estimated at costing at least £50bn (but will likely cost much more).

Expanding Gatwick, Stansted & Luton will likely require government funding as I doubt the owners of each could all afford to build new runways. Government funding will be required for improved surface access at least (TfL have said surface access improvements for a 2 runway Gatwick would cost ~£10bn).

Heathrow have said they will cover the costs of the new runway and will contribute £1bn to surface access costs. The estimates for those vary from £5bn to £20bn, which would leave between £4bn and £19bn for the government to pay.

When the options are laid out as such, a new runway at Heathrow actually provided the cheapest option (in terms of government spending).

With regards to Birmingham, both BHX and LGW have single runways yet Gatwick handled 4x the number of passengers as Birmingham. For now at least, Birmingham requires no new runways but improvements to facilities and surface access. Although they may end up having to for Heathrow, it is not government policy to fund these kind of improvements. That falls to the owners of the airports.

Whilst it may appear that the South East gets a lot of funding for infrastructure projects, I think the image below explains why that is the case.
UKCartogram.jpg


Map of the UK showing population distribution
 
Coathangar16: I'm not clear on what constitutes London population, but if I understand the map, then it claims to represent what, about 25% of the UK population. Now just remind us what percentage of UK government infrastructure spend London gets - you may care to consider the cost of the projects that Just Birmingham has kindly listed for us in coming up with an answer, bearing in mind those are billions of pounds.

hammerb32. We don't know what the aviation scene in the UK will be when / if R3 eventually opens, especially in terms of hub demand against p2p operations. "I can't think of 1 route being flown from a regional UK airport that would go when R3 opens" A nice theory, but surely the question, especially with long haul, is how will airlines react when all those nice new slots become available at LHR. I have to accept that Heathrow has a much higher demand for premium traffic than in the regions, although MAN doesn't do too badly now. If airlines decide they can make more money by putting a new route or extra frequencies into LHR using those new slots, despite the exorbitant fees, they have to find aircraft to operate them. I'm not saying the a/c would automatically come from their UK regional services, but there is a risk, particularly if a route is marginal anyway.

It may well be, as User001 thinks, that regional airports will grow anyway, but there is a legitimate question as to whether focusing expansion on LHR as a hub will stifle or hinder the extent of that growth.
 
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It will more than likely be LHR that gets the nod for R3 as it's the airport that all the big carriers want to fly to it's much quicker to access Central London from LHR than Gatwick or Stansted. A third runway will be a long time off but no doubt as soon as it gets built and the slots become available they'll be taken up by long haul european short haul and a low cost will probably move in and then everyone will be talking about R4!
Only way I could see it effect regional airports is the legacy carriers might shift routes but hopefully by then low cost carriers like Norwegian and JetBlue will be more than ready and able to fill the gaps!
 
Coathangar16: I'm not clear on what constitutes London population, but if I understand the map, then it claims to represent what, about 25% of the UK population. Now just remind us what percentage of UK government infrastructure spend London gets - you may care to consider the cost of the projects that Just Birmingham has kindly listed for us in coming up with an answer, bearing in mind those are billions of pounds.

I've seen many times that per capita London gets much more than anywhere else in the country - that's clearly not right, but.

Government has a finite pot of money to spend on everything. Consider that even with all those nice expensive fancy projects in London, during rush hour commutes, people are still crammed into trains just as they are in the North and other parts of the country, perhaps even more so. Distribute the funds equally across the country and those outside the South East would probably have a good level of infrastructure - enough seats, more trains, quicker journeys, etc. However overcrowding in London and the South East would become even worse.

Don't get me wrong, the regions need more spending in infrastructure, but not at the expense of London & the SE. I know at the moment L & SE gets spending at the expense of the regions, but whether you like it or not, London is the main engine of the UK. If it stops, the whole country suffers. Badly. If the regions stop, the country struggles, but can carry on.

At the end of the day, this is a whole other argument besides the original one about airport capacity in the South East.

e don't know what the aviation scene in the UK well be when / if R3 eventually opens, especially in terms of hub demand against p2p operations.

Put it this way:

If we expand LHR and need more hub capacity --> no problem
If we expand LHR and don't need more hub capacity --> no problem
If we don't expand LHR and don't need more hub capacity --> no problem
If we don't expand LHR and do need more hub capacity --> PROBLEM (no other UK hub airport)

If we expand LGW and need more P2P capacity --> no problem
If we expand LGW and don't need more P2P capacity --> no problem
If we don't expand LGW and don't need more P2P capacity --> no problem
If we don't expand LGW and do need more P2P capacity --> no problem (other P2P airports available)
 
hammerb32 - Expanding LHR is not a "no brainer" for one simple reason: the cost of the proposed R3 development is multiple times higher than the benefit it will ultimately deliver to UK plc. And upto £20Bn of the sum required to make it a reality will come directly from public funds - our money - with the privately-funded balance likely to be underwritten by the taxpayer as well. This is just way too much for a frankly underwhelming payback (260K additional movements annually). At a purely operational level there is a case for expanding LHR. But from a financial perspective this is blown out of the water by the maths. It is easy to believe that government money grows on trees, but it doesn't. It bleeds from real people and real businesses and it can only be spent once. If £20Bn of public money is blown on this, expect regional transport infrastructure funding to remain confined to the deep freeze for another generation. It's called opportunity cost. That is absolutely unacceptable, as we've endured 50 years of this third-class treatment in deference to London already.

Coathanger16 - You appear to believe that residents of London and the SE deserve preferential treatment over the rest of us. I respectfully disagree. They pay tax at the same rates we do, and the transport infrastructure spend they have already enjoyed at national expense is way more, multiple times more than the rest of the country has ever seen. This cannot continue. Public funds exist to serve all the UK public, not just the 25% who happen to live in London and the SE. The other 75% cannot be ignored indefinitely, no matter how convenient that may be for 'gone native' MP's in their cosy Westminster bubble.

LGW is perfectly well-suited to accommodating by far the largest real-world source of runway slot demand growth for London and the SE region. Leisure and no-frills traffic. The pressure isn't coming from Chengdu bookings. It's coming from Ibiza, Tenerife, Alicante, Dublin and the like. These are the additional flights which must be accommodated by the London Airports system, and the wildly-overpriced LHR option isn't the best solution. It's too expensive by far and not best suited to leisure / no-frills demand growth. That's where the real growth action is despite what Whitehall mandarins would prefer to see.
 
EGCC_MAN - clearly you didn't read my post, or have completely misunderstood. I by no means support the notion of spending more per person in the SE than elsewhere in the country, however I do wonder by how much "economic power & business" in London and the SE subsidize much of the rest of the country.

The problem is that whilst most of the demand may come from Spain etc, not ALL of it does. There is sufficient spare capacity across the UK to cater for those flights - though its questionable whether we NEED those flights. However, the only airport that can cater for long haul flights of any significance is Heathrow.

With regards to cost, you claim that anything spent on Heathrow will therefore not be spent on infrastructure elsewhere in the country. A similar argument is used by opponents of HS2. BUT. I don't know why, but ministers at the department for transport have said that money spent of HS2 wouldn't be spent elsewhere if HS2 didn't go ahead. The same likely applies for Heathrow. To say that spending £20bn on Heathrow would mean that it isn't spent elsewhere if Heathrow isn't expanded is wrong.
 
Whatever the arguments over LHR Law what is clear is when it comes toong term infrastructure planning this country is a basket case.

London has 6 International airports. They have 7 runways. Paris has 2 International airports and 7 runways.

If LHR is the chosen one then I fear that LTN, LGW and my neighbor, Souf'end, will suffer. Can't see Ryanair deserting STN.

Will take at least 10 years to build the new runway. Plenty of time for the regions to come to terms, make contingencies and continue to grow. No airline is going to wait and see whether to operate from BHX some because they will want to use the new capacity at LHR.
 
If LHR is the chosen one then I fear that LTN, LGW and my neighbor, Souf'end, will suffer. Can't see Ryanair deserting STN
Long haul wise the effect will be more far reaching as airports like BRS and CWL who are hoping to get more long haul routes especially scheduled probably won't see them or if they do get them they could lose them. It would probably even effect BHX and any potential american carriers they get in the future could be tempted by the lure of LHR. Short haul wise i doubt it would effect the closer regional airports not in the London area.
 
I'm afraid I agree with the financial experts at Bloomberg. ..Heathrow is a complete basket case.

The lunatics really are amongst us....

One damming line amongst many

" they need to raise more money for rw3 than the current asset value of Heathrow"

I cannot believe what I'm reading. .....

Can you seriously imagine any other project being given such ludicrous amounts of taxpayer money ...

If Network Rail were demanding these sums everyone would be laughing. ......

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-10-24/heathrow-runway-really-does-not-fly
 
Coathanger16: If £20Bn of public money is spent making LHR expansion work, it cannot be used elsewhere. That money is gone. Used up. If you've spent £20 in Sainsbury's you can't then go and spend it again in Tesco. You haven't got that money anymore. Rest assured that if the government has incurred a further £20Bn deficit liability on our behalf, it will most definitely influence funding availability for other infrastructure proposals competing for scarce state investment. Ministers will not sign off an infinite number of projects within the same timeframe. Once the budget has been allocated the money is gone.

Note that I have no wish to short-change London and the SE. But neither do I want every other region to be short-changed by them. We need an equitable distribution of state infrastructure funding, and we haven't seen anything close to that for half a century now. That is what must change.

By the way, be very wary of the argument that London raises far more tax revenue than anywhere else in the UK. It does raise more, but not to the extent presumed. Statistics flatter the SE because many national and multinational corporations announce their profits from a London HQ address and are taxed accordingly. But those tax revenues are actually the result of economic activity across the UK and in many cases globally.

Moving on to your other point, note that long-haul services do not require large quotas of runway slots. It is high frequency short-haul trunk routes which really bulk out the demand. If no R3 is built at LHR, long-haul services will still magically find a way in if the business case merits it. It will happen as it always has. Four short-haul A320's on a route will quietly become three daily A321's instead. A set of daily slots suddenly become available for the new long-haul. The operator of a marginal service will be offered an irresistible deal to surrender their slots and operate from LGW instead. Those slots switch to the new long-haul. And at a push, LHR could even extend its operating day by an hour. Controversial, yes, but more so than the alternative of building R3? Arguably not. Especially accompanied by guarantees that only the newest, quietest aircraft types will be eligible for late slots.

There are always ways and means.

Meanwhile, the market says that we do need large numbers of flights to Mediterranean resort airports. There is healthy demand for these from the travelling public. Unless we wish to go down a totalitarian central planning route (another conversation entirely), these flights are an integral part of the airports system and must be accommodated on SE runways.
 
BA does for instance have 10 A321neo on order so i wonder if these could be used on the Scottish and MAN flights reducing frequency and opening more slots. Also BA does have several 767 morning departures to major European airports so more of those flights could free up slots as well. Could as well Aer Lingus deploy a daily wide body on the Dublin route to free up some slots? If they want to they could free up slots but in the end a hell of a lot money will be spent on LHR R3 not to mention the M25 chaos it will cause! And it will have an effect on the regions infrastructure because you can guarentee that the government will be able to find money to fund LHR R3 but will still cut the WAG budget or not find the money for any potential trans pennine HS railway. When it comes to infrastructure spending London has a blank cheque and always will do.
 
If £20Bn of public money is spent making LHR expansion work, it cannot be used elsewhere. That money is gone. Used up. If you've spent £20 in Sainsbury's you can't then go and spend it again in Tesco.

I'm just repeating what govt has said - I don't know the specifics. Government has said that if HS2 doesn't go ahead, the £50bn due to be spent on HS2 will NOT be spent elsewhere. To us normal folk that doesn't make sense I know but thats how it is. You're argument assumes there is a national pot of money which projects can go to with a begging bowl. Is that the case, or is their a South East "pot" and a regional "pot". I don't know - I'm just speculating. It is also worth noting that with crossrail, a large portion of the funds was generated from a "business tax" whereby those business that would benefit from it contributed some money. The Canary Wharf Group for instance entirely self funded the station at Canary Wharf - no government money was spent on it. Perhaps if similar things happened across the country, government would be more willing to invest in the regions.

Moving on to your other point, note that long-haul services do not require large quotas of runway slots. It is high frequency short-haul trunk routes which really bulk out the demand. If no R3 is built at LHR, long-haul services will still magically find a way in if the business case merits it. It will happen as it always has. Four short-haul A320's on a route will quietly become three daily A321's instead. A set of daily slots suddenly become available for the new long-haul. The operator of a marginal service will be offered an irresistible deal to surrender their slots and operate from LGW instead. Those slots switch to the new long-haul. And at a push, LHR could even extend its operating day by an hour. Controversial, yes, but more so than the alternative of building R3? Arguably not. Especially accompanied by guarantees that only the newest, quietest aircraft types will be eligible for late slots.

So what you are saying is we should constrain the market so we can force it to do what is more politically palatable?

You're argument is that the majority of growth is focused on short haul and therefore that is where would should provide extra capacity. You say that new slots can me "made" at Heathrow by using larger aircraft on short haul routes (4 A320's --> 3 A321's) - surely the same could be said for any other airport. British Airways has long used B767 on short haul routes, hell even Iberia use an A340 between Heathrow and Madrid at times. easyJet could get some larger aircraft - airlines are looking to offload B757 and B767 - and hey presto, 3 A320's goes to a B767 and you get 2 new slots. Magic eh?

Even without using larger aircraft there is still A LOT of capacity for P2P growth in the South East. Gatwick's record for movements from a single runway in a single day is over 900. If that were to occur every day of the year, Gatwick would have a capacity of 330,000 movements (i.e. its at 82% capacity). Likewise Stansted and Luton are both single runway airports and could therefore accommodate the same maximum capacity (meaning they are currently operating at 51% and 35% capacity respectively). London City has a maximum capacity of 120,000 movements and its recent expansion will allow full use of those slots (which puts current usage at 71% capacity). Together, that puts those airports at a combined 57% of maximum capacity. That space capacity combined comes to around 470,000 movements - or the current throughput at Heathrow. And you still think Gatwick needs expanding?
 
So, LHR only. Government has chickened out. LGW should also have been included. But this is a decision on a new runway on the south east so it does not rule out growth in other regions. If I was PK I would continue with plans for BHX and the tie in with HS2. Let's fight our own corner of the market rather than becoming a London option.
 
So, LHR only. Government has chickened out. LGW should also have been included. But this is a decision on a new runway on the south east so it does not rule out growth in other regions. If I was PK I would continue with plans for BHX and the tie in with HS2. Let's fight our own corner of the market rather than becoming a London option.
 

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