The Heathrow Conundrum

December 5th, 2007

While Terminal 5 will be hosting the carrier formerly known as “The World’s Favourite Airline”, Heathrow Airport has rarely been out of the media eye during 2007.

It’s routinely voted as the least pleasurable airport within Europe to either transit or indeed, having the (unfortunate?) pleasure of starting or terminating one’s journey from London.

But is it really that bad?

Like any airport, Heathrow Airport is plagued by a variety of problems. Some issues affect some airports more than others.

Image courtesy of BAA

Take Al-Maktoum International Airport (JXB) being built just outside of Dubailand near the port of Jebel Ali.

Not many residents are there to protest against the Dubai Governments monumental project the size of Cardiff city. There is ample natural resource in terms of physical land space to place such a huge airport. Lets face it, anything sporting six parallel runways is gonna need space – a lot of space!

Image courtesy of Skyscrapercity.com

Heathrow does not have space adjacent to expand, although recent plans unveiled by the UK Government backed by British Airways envisage a third runway being constructed alongside the existing 27R/09L runway, with the possibility of a sixth terminal building.

Click here to see the proposals.

Such a project would take several years to accomplish. Not least because the local roads and other infrastructure would require major re-routing. Traffic at the M4 spur road into Heathrow is already congested 24 hours a day, eight days a week, along with notorious Bath Road/A4 from central London. Moving and replacing these roads will be a task in itself, not least because the inevitable delays due to road works will spill directly onto the M25 London Orbital motorway. And with work underway for the 2012 Olympics (the real waste of public money I might add), congestion and poor city links will likely mean Heathrow is vilified even more.

That’s before we consider the villages and homes that will likely require mandatory purchasing and destruction before any work can be done – the recipe for a transportation disaster in the capital is very real.

So, what to do?

A few years ago, a Government white paper suggested creating a new airport in Kent, but this was dropped as quickly as it was suggested.

Alongside those plans were studies into additional runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports.

Heathrow in particular comes in for heavy criticism just because it is Heathrow.

The airport operator, BAA, bought out by Spanish construction consortium Ferrovial last year has awoken to see its prized UK possession routinely under fire from environmental campaigners, politicians, airlines and the people who count most – passengers.

Chronic underinvestment over the last 20 years has hampered Heathrow’s ambitions, but the red-tape of the anti-airport expansion groups, the inept attitude of successive Governments has brought the nations busiest airport to a virtual gridlock.

It’s all very well that the current political regime realise that there is a pressing and immediate need to address the burgeoning traffic crises over the skies above the UK and London in particular – there is however, no mercy for those politicians that systematically allowed these anti-airport activists to delay inquiries (such as Terminal 5) and push back the development and expansion of the airport.

Ferrovial is already in the throes of demolishing the relics of Terminals 1 & 2 to be replaced with the all new Heathrow East terminal in time for the useless Olympics, but why this has to happen now, and not ten or fifteen years ago just shows that while BAA may have had a mandate to update the airport, it has not been able to fulfil because of external factors conspiring to play the stalling game.

Image courtesy of BAA

For me, Heathrow is nowhere near as bad as some other airports I have travelled to/from.

Yes of course, there are some outright dilapidated buildings and even terminal facilities, but all in all, for an airport operating at 95% of its capacity – it works bloody well.

In fact, having travelled through all four terminals, as I’m sure many others have, the experience can vary and that too is dependant on which airline you fly.

I’m a big fan of Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport – the big airy ceilings illuminated by huge glass panels is a treat to any passenger. The catch is however, most flights I have encountered rarely leave on time. And this is an airport operating at approximately 75% with double the number of runways that Heathrow has.

Go figure.

Like Charles De Gaulle, the newly renamed Dubai International is also a pleasure to fly to/through/from. Not least because Terminals 1 & 2 are immaculate and clean, unlike the dust covered exterior!

Image copyrighted and owned by BOEING777 and FleetBuzz.com

Heathrow suddenly doesn’t look so bad despite delays flights can and do encounter.

2008 will see most of the 90-odd resident airlines shuffle between the various terminals as BA shifts over to T5 in late March and Heathrow East undergoes its painful birth.

The bigger issue for the airport though, will be operating and managing a new influx of airplane. The Airbus A380.

Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Thai and Qantas are among the carriers poised to flood the aprons, taxiways and stands with their leviathan jets in the next few years.

Heathrow is certainly capable of handling these jets given that it was once regarded as the Boeing 747 capital of the world not so long ago – although seat count per jet at Heathrow has decreased year-on-year for the last twenty or so.

Frequencies are becoming ever more important together with traditional hub-to-hub flights.

So what does all this mean for the passenger aside from waiting a little longer than usual at the carousel to get their luggage?

In a nutshell, nothing.

What will change with those passengers flying with British Airways from Terminal 5 is a more seamless, effortless transition from check in to being seated aboard the airplane.

That’s the dream to be replicated across the entire airport. It won’ t happen overnight and in the eternal words of George Harrison, its gonna take a whole lotta spending money.

Critically, coping with a large influx of passengers is not as problematic so long as the infrastructure is in place to facilitate and support them. Given the stringent security checks prevalent at all airports, Heathrow is not alone in suffering passenger frustration during this time, which can often be intrusive.

Image courtesy of BAA

Heathrow’s problem is that in trying to physically expand, renovate and invest - is that passenger traffic is not going to suddenly hit the “pause” button and wait till its all done – that traffic is simply going to increase.

Therein lies part of the conundrum with Heathrow.

After sorting out all the political and environmental nonsense and stalling tactics of investment and expansion critics – getting the work done with minimal disruption and inconvenience to the travelling public is the next headache.

Reaching this stage is what will ultimately determine whether the investment is worth it – because once passengers become aggrieved at the inherent mess, they will simply avoid Heathrow, and possibly the UK altogether.

Lets not forget another twist to this dilemma.

Open Skies.

It’s a complete dream for those US based airlines who have for years tried to seek that Biblical inroad to London.

The US-EU Open Skies deal is heavily skewed in favour of US airlines.

EU airlines are getting a raw deal in not being able to offer intra-US flights just as American operators will be able to fly passengers between any two European airports. The door certainly doesn’t swing both ways.

Naturally, we can sit and question why, after years of protracted negotiations, nothing was done on a more proactive basis to ensure Heathrow’s expansion and competitiveness was a priority knowing full well that the prospect of liberalised skies would be a reality sooner rather than later.

Constructing a new super airport for London tomorrow would still not address the unremitting problem of infrastructure overload in the South East.

Image courtesy of The Telegraph

Perhaps the UK Government is guilty of being blinded by its passion for everything to be “London-centric”.

Manchester Airport is getting busier, but for those residing in the southern realms of England, no one would want to travel that far up north with Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton being much closer.

Naturally, a more progressive view would be to locate an all new airport much more geographically between for example, Manchester and Heathrow – a bit like, say, Oxford.

Oh yeah, there is an airport there already! Albeit not much good for handling A380’s I might add.

Going back to the issue, just what can be done about Heathrow? Aside from bulldozing all residents, activists and other such hindrances into oblivion, the answer is decidedly bleak for the interim.

People trying to get to and from the airport will still suffer delays, that’s if they manage to find their luggage at the carousel(s), cabs will still charge extortionate sums of money that would leave the mafia in envy and congestion in that corner of West London can only be eased by lawns of concrete over everything that stands in Heathrow’s path of retaining its crown glory in staying the crossroad of the globe (which Dubai is intent on emulating, if not outright stealing!).

Image copyrighted and owned by BOEING777 and FleetBuzz.com

Throwing money at the problem certainly helps.

Having obstacles in the way of that money going towards the cure is the far bigger headache.

The sooner the political elite and green loving campaigners realise that aviation in the UK is haphazardly being choked by their flag-waving protests, the likelihood of overseas investment is in dire jeopardy. There is a rather large EU-bloc ready to take that work onto the mainland…

Who wants to do business in a country with transportation links akin to undeveloped nations?

For all the big billboard advertisements of A380’s, 787’s and all things “green”, the red light of chaos descends upon this historic capital that will experience bottlenecks in the sky as well as the ground.

Already this year there have been instances of jets circling endlessly waiting to land with low fuel reserves.

At what price safety?

Will the “green brigade” perhaps take their thumbs outta their asses once a jet plonks itself over Tower Bridge? Or how about somewhere over Hyde Park Corner?

Not really many convenient places in London I can think of to perform an emergency/crash landing. God forbid that that should ever happen, I might add.

Agreed, some of these fuel saving policies are self inflicted by airlines reeling from $100 barrels of oil – but that by and large does not relate to the hindrance on the ground Heathrow presently faces.

Of course the easiest solution is to have the aviation experts in Dubai come over and do it all – preceded only by the plethora of shotguns and ammunition required to silence airport critics.

Image courtesy of Arabian Business

Passengers will vote with their wallets and purses – for Heathrow to stumble under Open Skies, network problems and intense competition and lose ground to rival European airports should be considered unacceptable.

Would any country allow any one of their prized national assets to implode under such immense competitive pressure? Heathrow may not be considered an industry per se, but without it, much of the UK would come to a grinding halt.

How slow that rate of decline is managed lies bizarrely in the very hands that would allow Heathrow to become a destitute aerodrome – to counter that, the gloves of business have to come off and fight just as dirty. If not dirtier.

Image copyrighted and owned by BOEING777 and FleetBuzz.com

If that means a few years of localised traffic chaos and a couple hundred homes be destroyed to make way for a bigger and better airport. So be it.

It will have been worth that visit to Heathrow after all.

Entry Filed under: Aeroplane, Aerospace, Air Transport, Air Travel, Airbus, Airlines, Airplanes, Airport, Airports, BA, BAA, Boeing, Dubai Air Show 2007, Ferrovial, Heathrow, Open Skies, Randy Tinseth, Richard Aboulafia, Travel