On Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:22:53 +0100, Mizter T
wrote:


On 02/09/2014 14:02, Recliner wrote:

On Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:14:48 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 13:07:29 on
Tue, 2 Sep 2014, Recliner remarked:
Basically, BA puts as many flights into Heathrow as will fit, with the
overflow left in Gatwick. As long haul is more profitable, it's
largely in Heathrow, apart from beach flights. Virgin does exactly the
same.

Exactly - and it's those beach flights which are the ones least likely
to be benefiting from a hub effect.

True, but the demand is for more hub flights, which is why it's
Heathrow that's bursting at the seams, while LCC-focused Stansted and
Gatwick are short of business. With six international airports, London
isn't really short of runway capacity, but it desperately needs a
bigger hub airport.


Stansted might be short of business, but I don't think the same could be
said of Gatwick, the world's busiest single runway airport. Easyjet
likes Gatwick because of the higher fares it can charge compared to say
Stansted or Luton.

You might think Gatwick is full, but it's not:

From:
http://www.ttgdigital.com/news/wtm-2...685816.article
Gatwick's chief executive, Stewart Wingate, said his airport had the
ability to significantly increase its passenger numbers.

“Even off the single runway we have capacity to grow the airport to 45
million passengers and with the current economic environment we see
that capacity actually seeing us through until sometime in the mid
2020s,” he said.

“When we say that there's a capacity crunch there is a capacity
crunch, but it is coming on a London system basis in the mid 2020s to
the late 2020s.

“To put it in context we have 11 million passengers of spare capacity
today at Gatwick, that's more than the entire size of Birmingham
airport. If I go around the M25, Stansted has somewhere close to 20
million passengers of spare capacity.


And from:
https://www.london.gov.uk/media/asse...rused-says-new
New research commissioned by the Assembly on the usage of London's
airports shows:

- Stansted Airport: 47 per cent of runway slots are available
- Luton Airport: 51 per cent of runway slots are available
- Gatwick Airport: 12 per cent of runway slots are currently
available
- Heathrow Airport: at 99 per cent capacity, Heathrow's runway
capacity is nearly full, but some evidence submitted suggests
increasing aircraft size would allow it to increase capacity