Second Runway At Gatwick Airport

[beeman]

Originally Posted by thenry

Could Gatwick take some of the load allowing Heathrow to rethink its heavily loaded airport or would Gatwick take on totally different flights?

Totally different flights. Gatwick (for the most part) handles point to point holiday flights. Heathrow however deals with interlineing "hub and spoke" type flights (when people fly in from 1 part of the world just to fly out again to another destination with the airline).

The ability to interline is VERY important to an airline and that requires most of the airlines hardwere to fly from one place (as well as their partner airlines).

For example to make gatwick as valuable to BA as heathrow is you would need to move the entire BA opperation to gatwick along with the opperations of ALL one world partners. which even with a second runway would simply transfer the capacity issue from heathrow to gatwick.

Landing slots (something that many airports give away) are sooo valuable at heathrow that BA brought an entire alirline (BMI) JUST to get hold of its landing rights.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by beeman

Totally different flights. Gatwick (for the most part) handles point to point holiday flights. Heathrow however deals with interlineing "hub and spoke" type flights (when people fly in from 1 part of the world just to fly out again to another destination with the airline).

The ability to interline is VERY important to an airline and that requires most of the airlines hardwere to fly from one place (as well as their partner airlines).

For example to make gatwick as valuable to BA as heathrow is you would need to move the entire BA opperation to gatwick along with the opperations of ALL one world partners. which even with a second runway would simply transfer the capacity issue from heathrow to gatwick.

Landing slots (something that many airports give away) are sooo valuable at heathrow that BA brought an entire alirline (BMI) JUST to get hold of its landing rights.

Surprised BA never bought out Gatwick and did move all operations and world partners there for their own exclusive use and leave Heathrow to everyone else.

[Osem]

Not sure the competition watchdog would allow that.

[thenry]

Originally Posted by beeman

Totally different flights. Gatwick (for the most part) handles point to point holiday flights. Heathrow however deals with interlineing "hub and spoke" type flights (when people fly in from 1 part of the world just to fly out again to another destination with the airline).

The ability to interline is VERY important to an airline and that requires most of the airlines hardwere to fly from one place (as well as their partner airlines).

For example to make gatwick as valuable to BA as heathrow is you would need to move the entire BA opperation to gatwick along with the opperations of ALL one world partners. which even with a second runway would simply transfer the capacity issue from heathrow to gatwick.

Landing slots (something that many airports give away) are sooo valuable at heathrow that BA brought an entire alirline (BMI) JUST to get hold of its landing rights.

Thank you for the explanation. Would Gatwick expansion positively effect Heathrow at all?

[beeman]

Originally Posted by thenry

Thank you for the explanation. Would Gatwick expansion positively effect Heathrow at all?

Its debatable, there still a few point to point airlines left at Heathrow who might move over to Gatwick (though why they havent already as theres is still copacity?) but not enought to make any real difference at Heathrow. IMO Gatwick expansion will make no real difference to issues at Heathrow,

The best solution is as i said earlier. Give BOTH airports there new runway which will get rid of the dreadded heathrow hold stack (where planes circle over London for 30-60 minuites waiting for landing clearence) which would reduce aircraft, noise AND pollution over london (even with increased flight numbers). and as a gesture of goodwill to the anti's give Heathrow a hard cap of 90% capacity (so they can not sell more then 90% of there slots) making emergency recovery easier.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by Osem

Not sure the competition watchdog would allow that.

I know but if all governments did it for one national/flag carrier it would probably not only solve a lot of issues but even reduce the costs of flights.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

I know but if all governments did it for one national/flag carrier it would probably not only solve a lot of issues but even reduce the costs of flights.

Yep it could well do but I dare say that it would result in all sorts of legal challenges from other airlines.