Some of the larger tour firms like Thomson and Thomas Cook are investing in the new Boeing Dreamliners. these are wide bodied aircraft which are both economical fuel wise and able to cover much longer distances. If Jet2 are looking to do a tarns-atlantic service you can be damn sure the rest will be watching very closely.

Other tour firms and some of the no frills are buying into Airbus models with the additional flexibility those models can provide.

The whole scene is changing Heathrow needs to adapt or more importantly the airlines that use it need to adapt to that. The days of the so called 'hub airport' are numbered! For example I have found US Airways do a bloody good deal if you fly out on a Sunday and rtn Sunday night Monday morning. They only fly from Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin and then only to Philadelphia which is its hub airport. From Philly you can reach any other US city large, medium and small by direct flight.

Very often it is cheaper (by a fair margin) to travel to Manchester and catch the US Airways flight and connect in Philly to LA or Las Vegas. Yes of course their is a time penalty but often that outweighs the savings which can be made.

The reason this airline is able to offer significantly lower fares is they are not charged astronomical sums to use Heathrow. People are becoming smarter and they all need to wake up to that. Another reason why the no frills airlines do not use the airport are these charges and the slots available.

If BAA are not careful they will hoist their own demise on their petard. They are pricing themselves out in the interests of greater shareholder profit and it aint gonna work.

Are you suggesting arreseter cables like on a carrier, might spill my Bourbon, or Jake brakes you know all about them, same problem, just joking.

Heathrow needs to grow because its competitors (eg, Schiphol, CDG.. etc) are. If they can offer more capacity, more runways, terminals, slots etc airlines will opt more for them meaning business will go elsewhere away from the UK. The runways at Heathrow can't get any busier. It's incredible to watch the aircraft land and depart Heathrow. As a pilot myself it impresses me how well the air traffic controllers can make this work effectively. An extra runway will reduce holding (as I mentioned before; Ockham, Lambourne, Biggin and Bovingdon) and thus reduce the amount of emissions too, especially with the newer and more economic and fuel efficient aircraft coming online.

You can't really compare Tesco to Heathrow.

Jet2 are operating transatlantic but this won't affect Heathrow. Manchester hasn't got the capacity to take traffic away from Heathrow. You only have to look back to the 80's and 90's when places like Manchester and even Birmingham had a lot of major airlines flying in to them and now those airlines only fly out of heathrow, there's a reason for that, the market isn't there in Manchester, BHX etc.
Additionally no frills airlines (Easyjet, Ryanair) won't be causing Heathrow any problems either; they operate from and to airports that are furthest away from the cities they are operating at. The reason why they do this is because they then pay lower landing and handling fees. The closer the airports are to the city, the more the airlines pay and cost saving is key to the LowCo business model. Additionally, the new B737's Ryanair are taking and the new A319 and A320's that Easyjet are taking on won't affect LHR either; You can't go transatlantic on either type at MTOW and the way the no frills airlines make their money is by cramming their aircraft full of passengers with a poorer product on board than you'd get from the major carriers operating in to LHR.

Also a large number of airlines flying in to LHR are bringing in business passengers and frequent travellers that go for a specific on board product. The likes of Manchester, Gatwick, BHX etc are more catering for the Bucket and spade brigade. Even the Virgin flight out of Manchester is to Orlando for holidaymakers, all of virgin's business routes are out of heathrow. Heathrow's route structure relates more to business routes where flexibility and frequency is a must. I noticed you mentioned US airways, even they operate from Heathrow to Philadelphia and Charlotte if I remember right, although if all goes to plan US airways aeroplanes will soon be wearing American Airlines new livery.

Not sure why one would think runways would be shorter? Aircraft are actually getting larger in order to move larger numbers of passengers around.



Thomson has had their B787 for a fair few months now and already sends it over the pond, this had already been their plan. Prior to that they were doing the same with B767's so nothing has changed in terms of the charter airlines. The B787 is replacing the B757 and B767's for most charter airlines. In terms of Jet2, they are using B757's.
Just as a general piece of info, British Airways have 4 B787 dreamliners based at Heathrow now and 3 airbus A380's with more of both to come.

If Heathrow grows to the extent the Heathrow management would want the whole of West London would be in such gridlock that passengers would almost refuse to travel there and would opt for better served airports anyway.

Heathrow can't realistically expand until it has free flowing transport routes and at the moment it doesn't and won't have for quite some years.

It would take a decade for a third runway to be completed and by that time there will be a few million more cars in the area.


Look at this morning for example. The Heathrow Connect trains are not running because of a major signalling problem from Paddington to Reading involving some power station. I'll bet traffic is extra heavy today and there are going to be some missed flights.

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Lets be careful out there !

People are demanding cheaper air travel.

The no frills are revolutionising the marketplace. LHR may have a place for business travel but even that is decreasing year on year exponentially as internet communications improve and firms look to economise.

People do not want to pay the premium to use Heathrow, this will only get worse in the future.

BAA seem to think that by expanding the airport they can recover these lost passenger numbers.

Seems to be conflicting reports out there about passenger numbers but this does not surprise me as they are trying to disguise the issues.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... mbers-fall



http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?a ... l&nid=2217



As both reports talk about 2011 one of them must be wrong!!

This is what councillors/developers should be planning for, how to ease congestion.



It's sad that happened. Unfortunately these things can't always be helped. This also happens to people that use trains to get to work and travel on them across the country.



The LowCo's have been 'revolutionising' the marketplace since the 80's but they still haven't caused Heathrow any problems. As I said before, they fly to airports that are further away from the town's/cities they serve. This equates to good cost saving by the airline but the passengers still need to travel a fair distance just to get to/from the airport and therefore the cost saving isn't as much as one would expect.

Also don't forget what I said before that the low cost airlines don't have the ability to fly transatlantic. Ryanair operates B737-800's and EasyJet operate Airbus A319 and A320's, they can't fly transatlantic with them. Low cost airlines are good for trips in to Europe and sunny destinations though which is a large portion of their market. Also bare in mind that such short routes do not require such a high staff level so there is a cost saving on that too. If they flew transatlantic (like BA, Virgin etc) the cost of a ticket would increase because they would need more cabin crew and pilots per aircraft.



Don't they? The airlines seem to be pretty happy operating in to Heathrow and thus are making money because only bums on seats make routes profitable. BA have added new routes recently. You may have seen the BA B777 with a panda face on the front advertising the new service to Chengdu (China, a country our government seems in favour of doing business with) Philippines airlines also started services to Heathrow this week too as did a new airline called Air Serbia. Germanwings also started operations to Heathrow a year or so ago too. There's also seasonal operators like Air Transat too. New operators and routes only come about through demand. Also airlines cooperate together a lot more now through different alliances such as One World and Star Alliance and therefore code share which creates good choice and connections for passengers too.

Considering what I have stated before about the addition of new routes and operators I'm more inclined to agree with the CAA regarding the increase in numbers. As I said, airlines are adding more routes and want to fly in to Heathrow because it gains them good business (passengers)

If Heathrow gets the third runway I think this would be the first time the airport has grown outside its original perimeter. However, it's also worth a mention that where they want to build the new runway is the same area where, in the original plan for Heathrow, there was intent to have 3 runways in a triangle layout which in the end were not built and would have become obsolete quickly with the introduction of the jet engined airliners and larger aircraft types, but it may have benefited them to have taken the land while they could have and built a longer runway in time anyway.

I think they should just get on with it. I love planes and I think the airport is great.

As long as you are able to 'walk' to work or anywhere else you want to go then it may not affect you that much.

What would be the projected % in passenger numbers be and apply that % to our already clogged roads. Doesn't bear thinking about.

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Lets be careful out there !

I think most arrivals probably shoot off in a train, coach or taxi straight to London.

Jon's right, in addition to that a lot of Heathrow's passengers are connecting to other flights to either other parts of the UK or other countries.

As for road congestion, as I said, the councillors and development planners should be working on this.