[IP] A sorry story that highlights the flaws of aviation policy
Begin forwarded message:
From: Andrew C Burnette <acb@xxxxxxx>
Date: December 22, 2006 12:38:05 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: A sorry story that highlights the flaws of aviation policy
Dave, for IP if you wish, as I know you and yours have been traveling
quite a bit recently. I'm sure many of us can sympathize with the
travelers at Heathrow in London.
Just in time for the Christmas Rush. The story doesn't seem to
change, just the date on the calendar.
Happy Holidays to everyone, whether you're ending one, starting
another, or have decided to celebrate multiple holidays (my personal
favorite), enjoy your families.
Cheers,
andy
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article2094673.ece
As the country comes to a standstill, Simon Calder offers a challenge
to the foggy thinking that clouds the aviation debate
By Simon Calder, Travel Editor
Published: 22 December 2006
Another day at Heathrow, another debacle. The fog grew thicker; the
queues longer, deeper, more desperate, and, in true Christmas-tale
fashion, no more hotel beds were to be had within miles of the
world's busiest airport. And today, it will get worse - nearly
200,000 are due to travel through the airport today.
Everyone had a sorry story: from the couple emigrating to Australia;
to the student trying to make a connecting flight from Washington; to
the family of five huddled together in a freezing tent with blankets,
but without food or luggage. And because Heathrow is key to the
nation's aviation system, the chaos was spreading to other airports.
Yesterday, Heathrow saw its aircraft handling capacity reduced by 40
per cent compared with normal operations.
About 300 flights were cancelled, bringing to 700 the total since the
fog descended on Tuesday - the vast majority short-haul operations.
British Airways again axed all its domestic flights to and from
Heathrow, plus 100 European services. Lufthansa, BMI and Alitalia
also experienced significant levels of cancellations.
All because of fog? Partly. But the weather simply conceals the root
of this week's airport chaos: the aviation infrastructure in the
south-east of England is abjectly short of capacity. The most
precious real estate in Britain is not in the City, but just south of
the M4 in west London: the pair of runways at Heathrow, where a pair
of "slots" can change hands for millions of pounds.
There is no prospect of imminent expansion. Heathrow's £4.3bn
Terminal 5 is due to open in March 2008. Although it will provide
more potential sleeping space for involuntarily overnighting
passengers, it does not address the central issue: that the pair of
runways at Heathrow can barely cope at the best of times, and these
are the worst of times. Other airports of a similar stature operate
with three, four, or five runways.
Plans for a shorter third runway north of the airport, and extra
airstrips at Gatwick and Stansted, are stalled at the planning and
financing stage. Arguments about new runways tangle awkwardly with
the broader debate on the true environmental costs of aviation and
who should pay them. These questions have been kicked into the long
grass.
On a day of thousands of losers, though, there were the odd winners.
Yesterday afternoon, a few lucky travellers aboard British Airways
flight 2940 found themselves unexpectedly upgraded to Club World. So
far, so good. But they had only a brief in-flight interlude in which
to experience the flat beds and video-on-demand for the flight lasted
barely an hour - it was a shuttle between Gatwick and Edinburgh. Four
days before Christmas, BA was obliged to replace a few-frills Boeing
737 with a more comfortable 777 usually reserved for transatlantic
routes.
The key word at BA's headquarters west of London yesterday was not
"service" but "dispersal", as senior managers sought to shift the
steadily growing population of stressed passengers at Heathrow and
Gatwick. The absurdity of using a long-haul jet to boost capacity on
a hop to Scotland exposed the scale of BA's desperation - as did its
latest diversification.
Yesterday, the world's favourite airline became a bus operator. Three
thousand passengers were dispatched by coach from Heathrow to
destinations in northern England and Scotland, while travellers
desperate enough to leave the country by any means were offered seats
in buses to Amsterdam and Paris.
In addition, British Airways had booked 3,000 rooms at hotels near
Heathrow. Most of the occupants were transit passengers, whose
journeys turned into a nightmare for one reason: they had bought
tickets that required a change of planes at Heathrow.
One-third of BA's business involves selling flights via London.
Yesterday, inbound travellers on delayed flights from continental
Europe discovered that their long-haul connections had already left,
and that they would have to stand by for spare seats on flights
leaving today or tomorrow to their final destination. They found
themselves jostling for a shrinking amount of available space with
travellers who had made their way to the capital from the north of
Britain by road or rail and are seeking seats to replace those on the
flights they have missed.
Terminal 4, where BA has its main intercontinental base, is the scene
of some of the worst problems. When the Prince and Princess of Wales
opened the terminal in 1986, it was never envisaged that the top
floor of the short-term car park would support a compound of marquees
that resemble an inferior version of Guantanamo Bay, with worse
weather and food. The blanket of fog currently sitting over southern
England was blamed by both British Airways and the airport owner, the
British Airports Authority, for the latest meltdown in Middlesex.
While modern aircraft equipped with "Category 3" auto-land equipment
are perfectly able to operate in thick fog, the low-visibility
procedures imposed by air traffic controllers operating with just two
runways drastically slow the rate of arrivals and departures as
aircraft are more widely spaced.
And what will the legacy be? Each of today's 40,000 new victims of
the hiatus will tell their own sad story. They may vow to become more
risk averse by avoiding Heathrow and British Airways for important
journeys. And if that happens, another bunch of winners will emerge
from the wreckage of broken dreams: the airports and airlines of
Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris.
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