Recliner wrote on 15 November 2009 16:44:23 ...
"Richard J." wrote in message

Recliner wrote on 15 November 2009
16:24:53 ...
"Richard J." wrote in message
news Recliner wrote on 15 November 2009
13:30:52 ...
"Basil Jet" wrote in
message

Apparently Heathrow T4 tube station has fewer passengers than West
Harrow and West Finchley!
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...d-stations.pdf

T4 is the quietest Heathrow LU station, but the numbers may be
lower than usual as that report covers a period when BA was moving
out and the terminal was being refurbished for its new tenants
(Air France, Alitalia, etc). The T4 station also has quite a poor
Tube service,

Alternate Heathrow Piccadilly trains serve T4, which therefore has a
train every 10 minutes, which is the same frequency as trains to T5.

True, but as T5 has never been better, it somehow doesn't seem so bad
(yes, I know that's irrational). T4 used to have twice the frequency,
and without the long station dwell time, too.

That's irrational too! :-)
The long dwell time is irrelevant to passengers catching a flight from
T4, but is a benefit for passengers flying into T4 as they are more
likely to find a train already waiting for them in the platform.

But it's a disincentive to T1 pax to take T4-T123 trains, which work
out slower than taking the following T123-T5 service (which is likely to
be much more crowded).

So that's another good feature of the "poor" T4 service - it's less crowded!

--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

On Nov 15, 3:41*pm, "Recliner" wrote:
Probably because more airlines have recently moved there from T2 and T3
(though BA and Qantas kangaroo route flights have moved from T4 to T3):
www.businesstraveller.com/news/heathrow-terminal-moves-update

Building T5 too small to take Qantas flights has got to be the most
epically stupid move by BAA *ever* (ideally, it'd be big enough to
take Iberia, AA and all the OneWorld carriers, but not having the
shared Oz flights is just weird).

T2 closes at the end of this month, but must already be something of a
shabby ghost town, as most of its tenants have departed.

Hadn't realised there was anything left there, to be honest.


--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

"John B" wrote in message

On Nov 15, 3:41 pm, "Recliner" wrote:
Probably because more airlines have recently moved there from T2 and
T3 (though BA and Qantas kangaroo route flights have moved from T4
to T3):
www.businesstraveller.com/news/heathrow-terminal-moves-update

Building T5 too small to take Qantas flights has got to be the most
epically stupid move by BAA *ever* (ideally, it'd be big enough to
take Iberia, AA and all the OneWorld carriers, but not having the
shared Oz flights is just weird).

The problem is that there wasn't room for a third satellite without
encroaching on to T3 and the fuel farm. Perhaps when T3 is redeveloped,
a new satellite attached to T5 will be built?

What I fail to understand is why the second satellite (5C) wasn't
scheduled to open at the same time as the rest of T5. It must surely be
more expensive to complete it surrounded by active taxiways and parked
planes than it would have been to do so when the rest of T5 was also a
building site.

"Recliner" gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying:

What I fail to understand is why the second satellite (5C) wasn't
scheduled to open at the same time as the rest of T5. It must surely be
more expensive to complete it surrounded by active taxiways and parked
planes than it would have been to do so when the rest of T5 was also a
building site.

I suspect that the additional cost of building it surrounded by "working
terminal" is less than the cost of delaying T5 until that bit was
finished...

"Adrian" wrote in message

"Recliner" gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying:

What I fail to understand is why the second satellite (5C) wasn't
scheduled to open at the same time as the rest of T5. It must surely
be more expensive to complete it surrounded by active taxiways and
parked planes than it would have been to do so when the rest of T5
was also a building site.

I suspect that the additional cost of building it surrounded by
"working terminal" is less than the cost of delaying T5 until that
bit was finished...

But it's not as if 5C is late -- it was always scheduled to be built a
couple of years later