London Banter - View Single Post

Roland Perry · September 3rd 14, 03:49 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 14:22:01 on Wed, 3 Sep
2014, d remarked:
Just how exactly does a hub airport help UK plc when

most of the

passengers will be passing through on to elsewhere and will

probably

just spend a few quid in duty free?

It helps because they don't just buy a few duty-frees, they buy a whole

onward flight, with all the infrastructure and staffing which that

implies.

So some construction work and a couple of hundred airport staffing jobs plus

air fares that probably go to a foreign airline in a foreign bank. Well

obviously thats really worth all the pollution , noise and a few billion

quid of taxpayers money.

You still don't get it do you? Infrastructure needs to be *operated* as
well as built. Planes need servicing, fuelling, crewing and so on.
Without transit passengers, the number of flights at Heathrow (and thus
the revenue generated for the area) would be down by around a third. So
that's a third of both the direct and indirect workforce laid off.
--
Roland Perry