Airport expansions

[signed]

The real cost that excludes the smaller national airlines or the likes of Air Transat or Norse is the cost of acquiring a slot pair at Heathrow. They're the ones who complain the most about Heathrow needing more capacity and it's because they want the kudos of flying to Heathrow but without the cost of it.

Norse is both leisure and "low cost", they won't move, despite the PR appeal that it would bring, they are much better suited to stay at Gatwick.

Air Transat is a very weird middle ground between leisure and low-cost, a la Icelandair.

They operate from CDG but Canada<>France flows being as strong as they are, it makes sense.
I don't think Montréal <> UK is anywhere as strong, Toronto has a better business case, but even then, LHR could work but I don't see them there IMO. Air Canada flies 4 daily, BA 2 daily, and Virgin 1 daily, so the competition may well be too high as well.

 

[Tetchytyke]

First, claiming ‘only BA uses Heathrow as a hub’ completely ignores global alliances like Star Alliance and SkyTeam, which control the remaining slots.

BA have 51% of slots at Heathrow and, as a result, OneWorld has 60% of the slots at Heathrow.

StarAlliance are next up at 19%. This includes Lufthansa, Singapore, and United, among others. Are any of these airlines using Heathrow as a hub? Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt into a United flight to the US? No, of course not: Lufthansa's hub is in Frankfurt and United's hub is in Chicago. Heathrow is at one end of a spoke for both those airlines. People will use the alliance to fly from Heathrow to Frankfurt or Chicago and then onwards from that hub.

SkyTeam are last at 10%, and half of that is Virgin/Delta. Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a KLM flight from Amsterdam into a Virgin or Delta flight to the US?

How this works in practice is that BA serve more cities in Germany from Heathrow than Lufthansa do. That's to be expected: Heathrow is BA's hub and the German cities are at the end of spokes, whereas Lufthansa's main hub is in Frankfurt and Heathrow is at the end of their spoke.

This high-value cargo revenue subsidises the flight so local passengers pay less. Gatwick and Stansted’s short-haul leisure jets physically do not have the belly space or the global network to move this trade.

Yes, and this is a reason why you will sometimes see widebody aircraft on short-haul flights from Heathrow, e.g. to Madrid or Helsinki. I'm not sure how this relates to expanding Heathrow though? The majority of aircraft movements at Heathrow are using the same narrow-body aircraft as used by the leisure airlines at Gatwick.

You mock Paris CDG and Amsterdam Schiphol because they ‘aren't convenient for Londoners’. They aren't trying to be. They are competing for global traffic and UK regional traffic. Because Heathrow is full, a business traveller from Leeds or Newcastle who wants to go to Tokyo will bypass London entirely and use KLM to fly via Amsterdam. Amsterdam connects to 24 UK regional airports, while Heathrow connects to only a fraction because it has no spare slots.

We've been through this. There are a number of slots which are restricted solely for domestic use at Heathrow. BA don't use all of them, they don't want to use all of them, which is why they're leased to Loganair. Loganair are using them to fly a 49-seater jet into Heathrow from Derry/Londonderry, which perhaps gives us an idea of the actual regional demand. The Dundee flight, run by a 42-seater turboprop, ends shortly because the government subsidy has dried up.

BA could use the slots. They just don't want to. Their jets make more money flying somewhere else, so they fly them somewhere else. More slots won't change the economics of this: the jets will still earn more flying somewhere else.

KLM can run a decent regional service in the UK because their planes are full of people travelling to Amsterdam- a very popular tourist and business destination that you can only reach from the north of the UK by flying or by overnight ferry- as well as those people flying further afield. With the best will in the world, you'd have to be insane (or it would have to be very cheap) to decide to fly from Leeds to Heathrow rather than taking the train if you were a Leeds resident visiting London for a weekend. But even then, KLM use relatively small jets for most of their regional flights to the UK, which again gives us an idea of the actual demand.

AFAIK BA's Newcastle flights are usually about 90% full of people connecting through Heathrow and it is similar from Manchester: there isn't the domestic demand because the train is so much better.

Local London demand often only fills half the plane. The transit passengers you are dismissing are what fill the remaining seats

There's so much demand to fly to London that we need to flatten thousands of homes to provide more capacity. But the existing flights are not economically viable based on the existing demand to fly to London.

There's a slight contradiction in that argument...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jul 2026 ==

Lufthansa does not need a UK AOC to use Heathrow as a hub

If an airline is based in the UK it would need a UK AOC.

There's a reason why Aer Lingus had to set up a UK subsidiary for their Manchester flights and there's a reason why Ryanair- much to their ongoing annoyance- had to do the same for their operations at Stansted. Even the regional airlines have had to: Emerald Airlines had to get a separate UK AOC for its small operations out of Belfast City.

 

[pug1]

BA have 51% of slots at Heathrow and, as a result, OneWorld has 60% of the slots at Heathrow.

StarAlliance are next up at 19%. This includes Lufthansa, Singapore, and United, among others. Are any of these airlines using Heathrow as a hub? Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt into a United flight to the US? No, of course not: Lufthansa's hub is in Frankfurt and United's hub is in Chicago. Heathrow is at one end of a spoke for both those airlines. People will use the alliance to fly from Heathrow to Frankfurt or Chicago and then onwards from that hub.

SkyTeam are last at 10%, and half of that is Virgin/Delta. Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a KLM flight from Amsterdam into a Virgin or Delta flight to the US?

How this works in practice is that BA serve more cities in Germany from Heathrow than Lufthansa do. That's to be expected: Heathrow is BA's hub and the German cities are at the end of spokes, whereas Lufthansa's main hub is in Frankfurt and Heathrow is at the end of their spoke.


Yes, and this is a reason why you will sometimes see widebody aircraft on short-haul flights from Heathrow, e.g. to Madrid or Helsinki. I'm not sure how this relates to expanding Heathrow though? The majority of aircraft movements at Heathrow are using the same narrow-body aircraft as used by the leisure airlines at Gatwick.


We've been through this. There are a number of slots which are restricted solely for domestic use at Heathrow. BA don't use all of them, they don't want to use all of them, which is why they're leased to Loganair. Loganair are using them to fly a 49-seater jet into Heathrow from Derry/Londonderry, which perhaps gives us an idea of the actual regional demand. The Dundee flight, run by a 42-seater turboprop, ends shortly because the government subsidy has dried up.

BA could use the slots. They just don't want to. Their jets make more money flying somewhere else, so they fly them somewhere else. More slots won't change the economics of this: the jets will still earn more flying somewhere else.

KLM can run a decent regional service in the UK because their planes are full of people travelling to Amsterdam- a very popular tourist and business destination that you can only reach from the north of the UK by flying or by overnight ferry- as well as those people flying further afield. With the best will in the world, you'd have to be insane (or it would have to be very cheap) to decide to fly from Leeds to Heathrow rather than taking the train if you were a Leeds resident visiting London for a weekend. But even then, KLM use relatively small jets for most of their regional flights to the UK, which again gives us an idea of the actual demand.

AFAIK BA's Newcastle flights are usually about 90% full of people connecting through Heathrow and it is similar from Manchester: there isn't the domestic demand because the train is so much better.


There's so much demand to fly to London that we need to flatten thousands of homes to provide more capacity. But the existing flights are not economically viable based on the existing demand to fly to London.

There's a slight contradiction in that argument...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jul 2026 ==


If an airline is based in the UK it would need a UK AOC.

There's a reason why Aer Lingus had to set up a UK subsidiary for their Manchester flights and there's a reason why Ryanair- much to their ongoing annoyance- had to do the same for their operations at Stansted.

Your logic sounds convincing on the surface, but you are looking at a heavily choked, artificially capped market and mistaking it for normal consumer behaviour. You are misinterpreting how global transfers work, confusing short-haul planes with long-haul freight capacity, and completely missing the basic financial mechanics of how global flight routes operate.

First, your example of someone flying from Frankfurt to Chicago via London is a total strawman. Of course nobody does that. What actually happens is that passengers fly into Heathrow from secondary global markets that don't have direct flights to the US—such as Gothenburg, Lisbon, Lagos, or Mumbai. They land at Heathrow and transfer onto a Star Alliance or SkyTeam partner flight to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Because Heathrow has been completely starved of slot capacity for decades, it has forced these alliances to rely on other hubs, causing the UK to actively lose this highly profitable transfer market to European rivals like Amsterdam or Paris.

Second, your point about narrow-body aircraft completely misses the logistics of air freight. Heathrow does not need to put cargo on short-haul European flights. Over 90% of Heathrow's cargo travels in the belly hold of long-haul, widebody aircraft bound for markets like Tokyo, New York, and Shanghai [£300 billion worth of goods per year]. The narrow-body planes are there to feed passengers into the hub to fill those massive long-haul jets. Expanding Heathrow creates the slot capacity to add entirely new long-haul destinations, directly expanding the UK's global trading capacity. Gatwick simply cannot replicate this because its business model is structurally built around short-haul, narrow-body holiday traffic that carries virtually no freight.

Third, your take on regional UK connectivity completely misinterprets the economics of scarcity. British Airways does not cut regional routes because of a lack of passenger demand; they cut them because Heathrow slots are a strictly rationed resource. When an airport is stuck at 100% capacity, an airline is forced to choose between using a slot for a small domestic flight or a highly lucrative long-haul route to Miami or Dubai. Naturally, they choose the long-haul route. Furthermore, regional passengers from Newcastle or Manchester are not flying to Heathrow to take a weekend trip to London; they are using it as a gateway to catch a connecting flight to the rest of the world. Because Heathrow cannot accommodate them, these passengers are forced to fly KLM via Amsterdam instead, which is precisely why Amsterdam connects to 24 UK regional airports while Heathrow barely connects to any. Yes there may be a very limited number of slots ring-fenced for domestic flights, but this is a token gesture that does nothing for the economic viability of the routes given the high costs needed to be levied against them. They aren’t squeezed out by lack of demand, they’re squeezed out because the economics don’t stack up in their favour.

Finally, the ‘slight contradiction’ you think you spotted reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of aviation economics. There is no contradiction between having massive overall demand for a destination and needing transit passengers to make individual long-haul routes viable. A modern long-haul flight requires a delicate mix of traffic to turn a profit: local holidaymakers, premium corporate travellers, belly-hold cargo, and transit passengers. High local demand alone does not guarantee a profitable 12-hour flight if an airline cannot fill the remaining seats or carry high-value cargo. Transit passengers provide the critical volume needed to keep ticket prices competitive and ensure the route remains financially viable.

It’s a shame, given you’re clearly intelligent, that you are appearing to progressively become more obtuse.

 

[gabrielhj07]

If an airline is based in the UK it would need a UK AOC.

There's a reason why Aer Lingus had to set up a UK subsidiary for their Manchester flights and there's a reason why Ryanair- much to their ongoing annoyance- had to do the same for their operations at Stansted. Even the regional airlines have had to: Emerald Airlines had to get a separate UK AOC for its small operations out of Belfast City.

What are you on about? LH/UA are not claiming to have aircraft based in London.

Rather, United & Lufthansa work together to connect more places in the USA & Germany than each airline would be able to on its own.

For efficiency’s sake, this will involve a hub where passenger transfers can take place. Somewhere like LHR, just for example, is conveniently located and served by both airlines regularly.

Whenever I have flown LHR-FRA, with either Lufthansa or BA, I have noted the high numbers of transatlantic pax.

 

[pug1]

What are you on about? LH/UA are not claiming to have aircraft based in London.

Rather, United & Lufthansa work together to connect more places in the USA & Germany than each airline would be able to on its own.

For efficiency’s sake, this will involve a hub where passenger transfers can take place. Somewhere like LHR, just for example, is conveniently located and served by both airlines regularly.

Whenever I have flown LHR-FRA, with either Lufthansa or BA I note the high numbers of transatlantic pax.

It is clear that Tetchytyke either fundamentally misunderstands the regulatory requirements of an AOC, or is simply being intentionally obtuse.

Ryanair routinely operates aircraft based in the UK using their standard Irish AOC. The only reason they—or any other EU airline—require a UK AOC is to bypass post-Brexit restrictions on flying domestic inter-UK routes or UK-to-non-EU destinations (which is exactly why Aer Lingus UK was established).

Therefore, whether LH/UA base aircraft at LHR or not is completely irrelevant to the AOC point. What they actually operate is a standard outstation. Having aircraft on the ground at LHR for crew changes, layovers, and stand capacity does not constitute an operational crew base, nor does it require a local UK AOC.

I fail to see the point being made here, other than an attempt to obfuscate the topic with a word salad.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Well yes, if they don’t make profit they don’t fly. I don’t think you understand the importance of this network as part of the supply chain, I’m not just talking cheap passenger seats here!

Ultimately a new airport is never happening so it’s pointless discussing it.

Why we are assuming a new airport would be so unprofitable to fly to, with the right transport links? An airport with 4 or 5 4km runways would have plenty of capacity and you could easily reduce landing fees with more departures as a result of the increased capacity.

We should stop confining ourselves to operating a global hub airport on an outdated and highly constrained site that is inappropriately sited for expansion.

I think Heathrows location is its key advantage. Added to the fact it has established supply industries around it. There is 80 years of evolving to undo there and re-do else where.

Land in London is some of the most valuable in the country. The land can be used for something else and those key industries that support Heathrow operations can be incentivised to move to a site in close proximity to the new airport if the land their current site sits on is worth a significant amount.

It is still not viable to cart all the things made by the supply industries across London to a hub in the middle of nowhere. The supply industries I am talking about are things like catering - there are factories close to Heathrow that make the pre packed meals that go on the flights. To move that you need even more space and housing for the families of the people who work in those factories. It is significant.

Why isn't it? We have relocated airports a long way outside of the city before, we can definitely do it again. Plenty of other countries have done it successfully recently.

So if it was so easy in Thailand and yet they did not do it then why would the UK do it with a lot less sparsely populated areas to choose from ?.

You are answering a point about Suvarnabhumi. Is is not built in some sparsely populated green field site a very long way from Bangkok. But Thailand does have a very low population density apart from Bangkok and some other major cities far away - yet the Thais chose a site near Bangkok, twenty miles away whereas Heathrow is already 16 miles away. That is despite your assertion that very underdeveloped ares are where a replacement for Heathrow should be built - the Thais had more chance of doing that than we in the UK do and yet they chose a site near Bangkok. Suvarnabhumi was built on an area of marsh land that was conveniently close to Bangkok and is really witin greater Bangkok. So it is a bearable distance for support workers from Don Muang area who probably have less choice than the equivalent UK workers.

The Thais chose to do it because they have many sparsely populated areas close to the capital. We do not.
20 miles from the city is not far by any stretch of the imagination. Belfast International is approximately 18 miles away from Belfast, and that was developed in a different era. With more modern technology, we can move an airport further away from the city.

Compare Heathrow to Gatwick. Gatwick is less popular because it is further away from London and the M25. Gatwick does have a good catchment area as regards holiday makers flying out of the UK to typical European destinations, but not convenient enough for business travel or much long haul. Same goes for Stanstead and Luton.

Where could you find a replacement for Heathrow that is more attractive than Gatwick, Stanstead or Luton ?.

What is so special about Heathrow - answer is its proximity to London AND the fact that it has an established support infrastructure around it.

Gatwick has suitable links to the M25 via the M23 and fast rail links into Central London with the Gatwick Express (and arguably until recently, Thameslink provided better direct links to the City than Heathrow had until the Elizabeth Line opened).
The reason Heathrow is more popular is because that is where BA chose to build their hub and operations around, and other airlines followed. It doesn't mean that Heathrow is the best airport site in all eternity.

I am afraid that (flattening a village) the cost, I don't like it, but let us not side step the issue with red herring alternatives.

My aspiration is better capacity at Heathrow and then as quickly as possible try to reduce demand by getting connecting domestic flights onto to High Speed rail.

Domestic/CTA flights do not make up a particularly significant portion of Heathrow operations, and most of the most frequent routes cannot reliably be replaced by HSR on current plans sadly. You'd need HS2 to be extended as far as Cumbria at the very least to push rail journey times under 3 hours from Central Belt Scotland to London and make rail properly competitive with connecting flights.

And Dublin/Belfast will always be difficult to connect because the cost and engineering challenges of a London to Dublin route involving tunnels would squash any plan realistically until significant technological advances are made to make tunnelling long distances more viable.
The best we can hope for in terms of connecting NI to GB is a bridge or tunnel Kintyre to Antrim, Beaufort Dyke will make any Portpatrick to Larne tunnel very difficult.

Alternative is an established airport in Europe and connecting flights into regional airports within the UK. So more flights in general and less business for the UK.

Why would it mean more flights in general? Most of these connections to a continental European hub already exist.
Less business for the UK aviation sector perhaps, but maybe some continental European hub airports are better equipped to handle this type of transfer traffic anyway.
CDG has more runways and plenty of good connection opportunities.
Schiphol has some of the same advantages as CDG, and Lelystad Airport is being built to relieve the airport for low cost short/medium-haul flights, releasing capacity at Schiphol.
Frankfurt also has similar advantages.

You are answering a point that 80,000 people work at Heathrow. They are not going to commute from near Heathrow to somewhere remote from London - not even near but across London. Those 80,000 people have families so VERY ROUGHLY 275,000 people will need homes, schools, hospitals etc. (that is 80,000 workers + 80,000 partners + 80,000 x 1.4 kids). It is not just about air travellers and their convenience it is also about the huge amount of peripheral industries and people required to support Heathrow.

With our birth rates, I think 200,000 is a more realistic figure, but again that is not an insurmountable barrier. We have built new cities with similar target population like Milton Keynes from scratch before. It is not impossible.

If you try to influence business too much it will walk away

I don't really want to get into politics, but I think businesses are far more concerned about the loss of economic benefits from the UK's EU membership than the location of one single airport.

 

[signed]

Land in London is some of the most valuable in the country. The land can be used for something else and those key industries that support Heathrow operations can be incentivised to move to a site in close proximity to the new airport if the land their current site sits on is worth a significant amount.

Moving an airport the size of Heathrow will cost billions that would be better served elsewhere (and no, it can’t be done only in the private sector, the risk is just immense), however you cut it by then building a massive redevelopment on the grounds, that would also cost another billion or 2. It would take decades before the money could be remade.

Istanbul airport has cost 10.9 Billion € in a low wage country, I can’t imagine how much the whole thing would be for a high wage country like the UK

 

[AlastairFraser]

Moving an airport the size of Heathrow will cost billions that would be better served elsewhere (and no, it can’t be done only in the private sector, the risk is just immense), however you cut it by then building a massive redevelopment on the grounds, that would also cost another billion or 2. It would take decades before the money could be remade.

Istanbul airport has cost 10.9 Billion € in a low wage country, I can’t imagine how much the whole thing would be for a high wage country like the UK

The new airport would be an investment with so much more potential though - so much more capacity to support growth and the landing fee income could support the payback of bonds issued to pay for construction costs.

I dispute that redevelopment of the Heathrow site would cost us money - even with other forum contributors' conservative estimates, a modest overall profit is likely to be made with no public sector financial involvement in the redevelopment at all.

 

[gabrielhj07]

20 miles from the city is not far by any stretch of the imagination. Belfast International is approximately 18 miles away from Belfast, and that was developed in a different era. With more modern technology, we can move an airport further away from the city.

Is that wise? Just because you can etc… BFS is inconveniently located for anything other than its own car park.

And Dublin/Belfast will always be difficult to connect because the cost and engineering challenges of a London to Dublin route involving tunnels would squash any plan realistically until significant technological advances are made to make tunnelling long distances more viable.
The best we can hope for in terms of connecting NI to GB is a bridge or tunnel Kintyre to Antrim, Beaufort Dyke will make any Portpatrick to Larne tunnel very difficult.

I see we’re back into the realms of fantasy.

 

[H F Stephens]

The rules are already enforced, hence a limited number of slots ringfenced for domestic routes on smaller aircraft. The point is though that because LHR is at capacity the airlines must focus on what makes the big money to service the payments they must make to the airport. Flying 50-100 seater aircraft in is only inefficient because slots are scarce and expensive.

I get the argument for improved surface access to Heathrow, but it’s really not the same. Unless HS2 went ahead and linked all major cities up directly to LHR then surface access will always be inefficient. It does however give KLM a boost and I personally cannot fault the service I get using KLM from my local, nor can I fault the experience in AMS which is much nicer than LHR!

We won’t get a new airport. It’s just never going to happen. Because the other London airports are simply not attractive on the same level as LHR, it’s LHR or none. I don’t like it, but it’s how it is.

Mostly wrong.

Airlines absolutely want to fly to Heathrow. They consider there to be kudos and prestige in flying to Heathrow and they also consider that Gatwick and Stansted offer less kudos and less prestige.

This is the reason why Heathrow wants to expand. Heathrow knows demand from airlines exceeds capacity. Heathrow can make more money if it expands.

But the flip side of this is that the extra demand for Heathrow is likely to come from airlines who currently can't get Heathrow slots (or as many as they want) and are therefore "relegated" to Gatwick or Stansted. It is, at least in my opinion, highly unlikely airlines will add extra flights to London: they will simply move their existing flights from Gatwick to Heathrow. I'm sure Heathrow's dubious foreign ownership would love to steal all Gatwick's customers. That's business.

None of this means that London (as opposed to Heathrow) needs more airport capacity though. It has plenty. Use what exists first.

Right.

Completely wrong. Aviation is an ecosystem of distinct markets. Gatwick and Stansted are not hubs, they are primarily leisure oriented airports and as such do not operate in the same market. To simply suggest that opening a new runway at Heathrow would just result in airlines moving from STN and LGW is patently incorrect. The competition is CDG, MUC, AMS etc, not other London airports.

LGW is owned by Vinci. Vinci are French.

Mostly wrong, again. And Vinci doesn’t own 49.99% of Gatwick.

There is only one airline which operates through Heathrow as a hub, and that is British Airways. So let's talk about them.

BA have 52% of all the slots at Heathrow. If we're being charitable and include the other IAG airlines and their OneWorld alliance partners, they get up to 60% of all slots at Heathrow. So even then, at least 40% of everything through Heathrow is non-hub traffic.

But BA also have a significant presence at Gatwick, they're still the second biggest airline there behind EasyJet.

So we expand Heathrow. What do we think BA will do? Do we think they will buy loads of new aircraft and fly loads of extra flights from Heathrow, in addition to their existing Gatwick flights? Or do we think that BA might decide to simply consolidate their operations and move their Gatwick flights to Heathrow? Maybe they'd do neither, given their use of a different AOC for most of their Gatwick flights.

What about the other airlines? Virgin tried a domestic network and it failed. EasyJet don't operate a hub model, they are solely point-to-point. The rest are non-UK airlines who wouldn't be able to use Heathrow as a hub, even if they wanted to, without setting up a UK operation and getting a separate UK AOC. And would they want to do that? Lufthansa already have a hub in Frankfurt, Emirates already have a hub in Dubai.

As for other European airports being the competition, really? Amsterdam Schiphol has many things going for it, but it isn't particularly convenient for London. Same with Frankfurt or Paris CDG. Likewise, Heathrow isn't particularly convenient for Munich or Madrid.

So that leaves us with UK regional connectivity, e.g. people in Leeds or Bristol flying via Heathrow instead of via Amsterdam or Paris. BA don't really much care about it and haven't done since the mid 90s, Virgin tried it and lost a load of money, and Loganair only fly to Heathrow because they are paid to by the IOM government and by the NI Assembly.

The talk of Heathrow as a hub is a bit of a red herring for these reasons. But, even if it isn't, what tangible financial benefit does a passenger flying from Munich to New York via Heathrow add to the UK? Even at WH Smith prices, someone buying a KitKat and a bottle of Fanta whilst they're connecting between two flights isn't going to add much value.


Yes, that's my point. The smaller non-UK long-haul airlines would dearly love to have more slots at Heathrow. But they're not going to fly more often to London- as you say, it's a long and thin route- they're just going to move their existing flights from Gatwick to Heathrow. I'm thinking of the likes of Air Transat, WestJet, or Norse in this.

Right.

The fees that Heathrow charge for passenger movements aren't actually very different to the charges at Gatwick.

The breakdown Loganair provide when you book with them, especially when you book an Avios redemption, is interesting, the airport fees are actually higher for them at City than at Heathrow.

The real cost that excludes the smaller national airlines or the likes of Air Transat or Norse is the cost of acquiring a slot pair at Heathrow. They're the ones who complain the most about Heathrow needing more capacity and it's because they want the kudos of flying to Heathrow but without the cost of it.

I'd agree about the leisure airlines not moving from Gatwick. Likewise, the likes of Wizz and Ryanair wouldn't touch Heathrow with a bargepole.

It's all why I remain very sceptical that Heathrow actually needs to be expanded. I understand why Heathrow's foreign shareholders would like to expand it, but that's not the same thing at all.

Right again.

You are throwing around industry jargon like ‘AOCs’ to sound informed, but your reply completely misunderstands global aviation economics. Your points fail under basic scrutiny because you are treating airlines as isolated entities rather than parts of massive global networks, and you are ignoring how flights are actually funded.

First, claiming ‘only BA uses Heathrow as a hub’ completely ignores global alliances like Star Alliance and SkyTeam, which control the remaining slots. Lufthansa does not need a UK AOC to use Heathrow as a hub; its alliance partners feed passengers into its network. These airlines explicitly coordinate schedules to swap millions of transfer passengers between flights. Heathrow acts as a multi-airline global hub ecosystem, not a single-airline fortress.

Second, dismissing transit passengers as ‘only worth the price of a KitKat at WH Smith’ is economically illiterate. Long-haul routes to niche global markets are incredibly expensive. Local London demand often only fills half the plane. The transit passengers you are dismissing are what fill the remaining seats, making the entire route financially viable. Without those connecting passengers, the route gets cancelled entirely, and local British businesses lose direct global connectivity.

Third, you completely ignored cargo, which is Heathrow's secret financial engine. Heathrow is actually the UK's largest port by value, handling roughly £300 billion worth of goods per year, which is over a quarter of all UK trade. Roughly 90% of this cargo is carried in the ‘belly hold’ underneath passenger seats. This high-value cargo revenue subsidises the flight so local passengers pay less. Gatwick and Stansted’s short-haul leisure jets physically do not have the belly space or the global network to move this trade.

Finally, you misidentified the competition. You mock Paris CDG and Amsterdam Schiphol because they ‘aren't convenient for Londoners’. They aren't trying to be. They are competing for global traffic and UK regional traffic. Because Heathrow is full, a business traveller from Leeds or Newcastle who wants to go to Tokyo will bypass London entirely and use KLM to fly via Amsterdam. Amsterdam connects to 24 UK regional airports, while Heathrow connects to only a fraction because it has no spare slots. The UK is actively bleeding global trade and regional economic connectivity to Europe because Heathrow cannot expand.

Almost completely and utterly wrong, again.

BA have 51% of slots at Heathrow and, as a result, OneWorld has 60% of the slots at Heathrow.

StarAlliance are next up at 19%. This includes Lufthansa, Singapore, and United, among others. Are any of these airlines using Heathrow as a hub? Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt into a United flight to the US? No, of course not: Lufthansa's hub is in Frankfurt and United's hub is in Chicago. Heathrow is at one end of a spoke for both those airlines. People will use the alliance to fly from Heathrow to Frankfurt or Chicago and then onwards from that hub.

SkyTeam are last at 10%, and half of that is Virgin/Delta. Are there huge numbers of people connecting from a KLM flight from Amsterdam into a Virgin or Delta flight to the US?

How this works in practice is that BA serve more cities in Germany from Heathrow than Lufthansa do. That's to be expected: Heathrow is BA's hub and the German cities are at the end of spokes, whereas Lufthansa's main hub is in Frankfurt and Heathrow is at the end of their spoke.


Yes, and this is a reason why you will sometimes see widebody aircraft on short-haul flights from Heathrow, e.g. to Madrid or Helsinki. I'm not sure how this relates to expanding Heathrow though? The majority of aircraft movements at Heathrow are using the same narrow-body aircraft as used by the leisure airlines at Gatwick.


We've been through this. There are a number of slots which are restricted solely for domestic use at Heathrow. BA don't use all of them, they don't want to use all of them, which is why they're leased to Loganair. Loganair are using them to fly a 49-seater jet into Heathrow from Derry/Londonderry, which perhaps gives us an idea of the actual regional demand. The Dundee flight, run by a 42-seater turboprop, ends shortly because the government subsidy has dried up.

BA could use the slots. They just don't want to. Their jets make more money flying somewhere else, so they fly them somewhere else. More slots won't change the economics of this: the jets will still earn more flying somewhere else.

KLM can run a decent regional service in the UK because their planes are full of people travelling to Amsterdam- a very popular tourist and business destination that you can only reach from the north of the UK by flying or by overnight ferry- as well as those people flying further afield. With the best will in the world, you'd have to be insane (or it would have to be very cheap) to decide to fly from Leeds to Heathrow rather than taking the train if you were a Leeds resident visiting London for a weekend. But even then, KLM use relatively small jets for most of their regional flights to the UK, which again gives us an idea of the actual demand.

AFAIK BA's Newcastle flights are usually about 90% full of people connecting through Heathrow and it is similar from Manchester: there isn't the domestic demand because the train is so much better.


There's so much demand to fly to London that we need to flatten thousands of homes to provide more capacity. But the existing flights are not economically viable based on the existing demand to fly to London.

There's a slight contradiction in that argument...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jul 2026 ==


If an airline is based in the UK it would need a UK AOC.

There's a reason why Aer Lingus had to set up a UK subsidiary for their Manchester flights and there's a reason why Ryanair- much to their ongoing annoyance- had to do the same for their operations at Stansted. Even the regional airlines have had to: Emerald Airlines had to get a separate UK AOC for its small operations out of Belfast City.

Mostly right.

Your logic sounds convincing on the surface, but you are looking at a heavily choked, artificially capped market and mistaking it for normal consumer behaviour. You are misinterpreting how global transfers work, confusing short-haul planes with long-haul freight capacity, and completely missing the basic financial mechanics of how global flight routes operate.

First, your example of someone flying from Frankfurt to Chicago via London is a total strawman. Of course nobody does that. What actually happens is that passengers fly into Heathrow from secondary global markets that don't have direct flights to the US—such as Gothenburg, Lisbon, Lagos, or Mumbai. They land at Heathrow and transfer onto a Star Alliance or SkyTeam partner flight to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Because Heathrow has been completely starved of slot capacity for decades, it has forced these alliances to rely on other hubs, causing the UK to actively lose this highly profitable transfer market to European rivals like Amsterdam or Paris.

Second, your point about narrow-body aircraft completely misses the logistics of air freight. Heathrow does not need to put cargo on short-haul European flights. Over 90% of Heathrow's cargo travels in the belly hold of long-haul, widebody aircraft bound for markets like Tokyo, New York, and Shanghai [£300 billion worth of goods per year]. The narrow-body planes are there to feed passengers into the hub to fill those massive long-haul jets. Expanding Heathrow creates the slot capacity to add entirely new long-haul destinations, directly expanding the UK's global trading capacity. Gatwick simply cannot replicate this because its business model is structurally built around short-haul, narrow-body holiday traffic that carries virtually no freight.

Third, your take on regional UK connectivity completely misinterprets the economics of scarcity. British Airways does not cut regional routes because of a lack of passenger demand; they cut them because Heathrow slots are a strictly rationed resource. When an airport is stuck at 100% capacity, an airline is forced to choose between using a slot for a small domestic flight or a highly lucrative long-haul route to Miami or Dubai. Naturally, they choose the long-haul route. Furthermore, regional passengers from Newcastle or Manchester are not flying to Heathrow to take a weekend trip to London; they are using it as a gateway to catch a connecting flight to the rest of the world. Because Heathrow cannot accommodate them, these passengers are forced to fly KLM via Amsterdam instead, which is precisely why Amsterdam connects to 24 UK regional airports while Heathrow barely connects to any. Yes there may be a very limited number of slots ring-fenced for domestic flights, but this is a token gesture that does nothing for the economic viability of the routes given the high costs needed to be levied against them. They aren’t squeezed out by lack of demand, they’re squeezed out because the economics don’t stack up in their favour.

Finally, the ‘slight contradiction’ you think you spotted reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of aviation economics. There is no contradiction between having massive overall demand for a destination and needing transit passengers to make individual long-haul routes viable. A modern long-haul flight requires a delicate mix of traffic to turn a profit: local holidaymakers, premium corporate travellers, belly-hold cargo, and transit passengers. High local demand alone does not guarantee a profitable 12-hour flight if an airline cannot fill the remaining seats or carry high-value cargo. Transit passengers provide the critical volume needed to keep ticket prices competitive and ensure the route remains financially viable.

It’s a shame, given you’re clearly intelligent, that you are appearing to progressively become more obtuse.

Admirable consistency but, still, almost completely wrong.

It is clear that Tetchytyke either fundamentally misunderstands the regulatory requirements of an AOC, or is simply being intentionally obtuse.

Ryanair routinely operates aircraft based in the UK using their standard Irish AOC. The only reason they—or any other EU airline—require a UK AOC is to bypass post-Brexit restrictions on flying domestic inter-UK routes or UK-to-non-EU destinations (which is exactly why Aer Lingus UK was established).

Therefore, whether LH/UA base aircraft at LHR or not is completely irrelevant to the AOC point. What they actually operate is a standard outstation. Having aircraft on the ground at LHR for crew changes, layovers, and stand capacity does not constitute an operational crew base, nor does it require a local UK AOC.

I fail to see the point being made here, other than an attempt to obfuscate the topic with a word salad.

Yeah, as they say: mostly no.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Is that wise? Just because you can etc… BFS is inconveniently located for anything other than its own car park.

BFS is well located for the entirety of NI as that is what it served. Belfast itself has BHD, and BFS would be perfectly useable if they built a station on the Lisburn to Antrim line.

I see we’re back into the realms of fantasy.

I agree it's very unlikely that we will replace most domestic London to NI/RoI flights this side of 2050, my point was more about replying to the poster who suggested we can replace most domestic flights with HSR. Not possible IMHO

 

[pug1]

Mostly wrong.



Right.



Mostly wrong, again. And Vinci doesn’t own 49.99% of Gatwick.



Right.



Right again.



Almost completely and utterly wrong, again.



Mostly right.



Admirable consistency but, still, almost completely wrong.



Yeah, as they say: mostly no.

Thanks for your attempt at lazy grading, but it’s very clear you’ve literally got no idea what you’re talking about either. Interesting that you choose to not offer anything yourself, isn’t it. Also interesting that you point out a fact, by confirming my fact but posting a non-fact. VINCI do not indeed own 49.99% in LGW, they do indeed own 50.01%, which you rather bizarrely seem to be agreeing with by saying you don’t agree? Clearly you are a troll, which is very sad, but please do come back if you have anything constructive to say.

 

[Peter Sarf]

.......................

I agree it's very unlikely that we will replace most domestic London to NI/RoI flights this side of 2050, my point was more about replying to the poster who suggested we can replace most domestic flights with HSR. Not possible IMHO

My bold. I meant replace as many as possible domestic flights with High Speed Rail (HSR). I am not referring to domestic flights that happen to need to cross the sea, they are only a minority of all United Kingdom domestic flights.

REQUEST FOR EVERYBODY :-
I have noticed this thread is getting rather a lot of aviation Acronyms used - makes it harder for people to read who come here to learn about aviation and airports.
Can we stick to full names please ?.

 

[TravelDream]

So much on this thread.

So much of it tainted by whether you ideologically support Heathrow expansion or not.

I also don't get this silliness on ownership. The UK has privaitsed itself to the highest bidder - generally a foreign company or government.
Heathrow, Stansted and Luton are primairly state-owned. Gatwick and London City have some state ownership, but are primarily privately owned.

If you want British owned you need to fly from Luton (owned by Luton council, but operated primairly by the Spanish state) or Stansted (majority owned and operated by Manchester's councils) only.

That is just the reality of the privitisation of public utiltiies and infreastructure in the UK.

If an airline is based in the UK it would need a UK AOC.

Not necessarily.

There are a significant number of flights operated by aircraft and crews based in the UK by a foreign operator. Ryanair being the prime example, but you also have SAS Connect. Of course they only operate from the UK to their home market, but still it's possible.

Similarly, we have seen UK airlines set up bases in places like Palma before. Thomas Cook did before their end. Though I believe none do right now, we could see it happen again.

Another example of a hub for a city that has moved is Bangkok Don Muang airport which got replaced by Suvarnabhumi airport. They are 20 miles apart (32 km). More importantly they are roughly the same distance from the centre of Bankkok so the new airport is not really in some remove area.

Very different scenario though.

Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang are about equal distance to the centre of the city. At opening, Suvarnabhumi was planned with a rail link whilst DM didn't have one meaning Suvarnabhumi was faster to the centre than DM (and still is though DM now is on a metro rail line). Suvarnabhumi also was and is faster by taxi on the toll highway vs DM.
DM was closed not because of noise, but because of capacity. If they were that concerned about noise, Suvarnabhumi would have been built further east which is incredibly sparsely populated.
In the end, DM reopened as a sort of low cost hub. Bangkok handles over 100 mil passengers per year so two airports makes sense.

More similar scenarios to the nonsense of Maplin Sands or Boris island is Tokyo Narita and Montreal Mirabel.
The former airlines are desperate to get out of as it's so far. Haneda definitely commands a premium in fares and demand. And remember Narita has two separate high speed rail likes to Tokyo. Only the government forcing airlines to Narita made it a busy airport.
The latter, Mirabel, was a complete disaster.

So the two nearest alternatives are more than twice as far from London as most newer airports. They really do not have any infrastructure nearby. No towns which people could live in to work at them. People and service industries would have to re-locate.

80,000 people work at LHR, so on top of a huge airport a town the size of Reading to accommodate them + families would need to be built.

Never, ever happening.

London is where the money is, and that's where the demand is. Some fields in Lincolnshire aren't going to be attractive.

Very important point. The West London/ M4 corridor economy is HIGHLY dependent on Heathrow being where it is.

 

[Peter Sarf]

So much on this thread.

So much of it tainted by whether you ideologically support Heathrow expansion or not.

I also don't get this silliness on ownership. The UK has privaitsed itself to the highest bidder - generally a foreign company or government.
Heathrow, Stansted and Luton are primairly state-owned. Gatwick and London City have some state ownership, but are primarily privately owned.

If you want British owned you need to fly from Luton (owned by Luton council, but operated primairly by the Spanish state) or Stansted (majority owned and operated by Manchester's councils) only.

That is just the reality of the privitisation of public utiltiies and infreastructure in the UK.

You are reminding me of the water supply industry and how much more my water bills are these days !. Raised money for the government of the day at the time - short term-ism. Which is why no one has the stamina (or attention span) to see High Speed Rail through.

Not necessarily.

There are a significant number of flights operated by aircraft and crews based in the UK by a foreign operator. Ryanair being the prime example, but you also have SAS Connect. Of course they only operate from the UK to their home market, but still it's possible.

Similarly, we have seen UK airlines set up bases in places like Palma before. Thomas Cook did before their end. Though I believe none do right now, we could see it happen again.

I will admit, licences etc are lost on me.

Very different scenario though.

Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang are about equal distance to the centre of the city. At opening, Suvarnabhumi was planned with a rail link whilst DM didn't have one meaning Suvarnabhumi was faster to the centre than DM (and still is though DM now is on a metro rail line). Suvarnabhumi also was and is faster by taxi on the toll highway vs DM.
DM was closed not because of noise, but because of capacity. If they were that concerned about noise, Suvarnabhumi would have been built further east which is incredibly sparsely populated.
In the end, DM reopened as a sort of low cost hub. Bangkok handles over 100 mil passengers per year so two airports makes sense.

Yes Don Muang had awfull links to the rest of Bangkok - no dedicated rail link. Getting there did get better once the toll road opened. But yes you are right in that Suvarnabhumi got a Metro line before Don Muang.

You are right - I doubt very much that concerns about noise were relevant to the planning of a replacement for Don Muang at all so easy to keep it near the capital city. That won't be the case in the UK.

I know Don Muang was kept open for domestic flights (not sure what proportion but possibly non Thai Airways operators and that might have changed now).

Compare to Heathrow which is already well connected so why throw all that away.

Occurs to me that Heathrow, if replaced, might not actually ever close. So might as well keep all the noise in one place and where it already is. People who live near Heathrow are probably used to the noise. I live in Croydon, just to the South and about 50% of the time arrivals from the West come over/near me before their U-turn over central Croydon. I think any flights from the East joins from the stack over Kenley/Biggin hill. Yes its noisy but after 38 years I have got used to it so why bother forcing someone else to get used to it.

I do miss Concorde going by as it growled its way towards Heathrow. Sort of raised ones patriotism. Of late, the newer planes are quieter BUT the higher pitched noise seems more noticeable. Granted in Croydon we do not get the noise of takeoff. But why move Heathrow and risk disturbing people who currently do not have to get used to the noise. After 80 years most people who do not like the noise of Heathrow have moved away or not moved near there (or passed away due to old age). Why invalidate all those decisions made so some have to move again.

More similar scenarios to the nonsense of Maplin Sands or Boris island is Tokyo Narita and Montreal Mirabel.
The former airlines are desperate to get out of as it's so far. Haneda definitely commands a premium in fares and demand. And remember Narita has two separate high speed rail likes to Tokyo. Only the government forcing airlines to Narita made it a busy airport.
The latter, Mirabel, was a complete disaster.

Yes. Just too far away to be relevant for an airport in my view.

Very important point. The West London/ M4 corridor economy is HIGHLY dependent on Heathrow being where it is.

I agree. Removing Heathrow could well send the Thames valley into decline, not just the West London suburbs.

 

[AlastairFraser]

My bold. I meant replace as many as possible domestic flights with High Speed Rail (HSR). I am not referring to domestic flights that happen to need to cross the sea, they are only a minority of all United Kingdom domestic flights.

OK - what are you going to viably replace with HSR?
London to Newquay? A Cornwall HSR isn't happening any time soon.
London to Manchester/Newcastle? Perhaps, but removing those will barely make an impact.
London to Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen/Inverness? No chance unless HS2 gets a phase 3 to extend beyond Lancs at the very least, and even then, London to Aberdeen/Inverness will be still be uncompetitive by rail.

 

[TravelDream]

You are reminding me of the water supply industry and how much more my water bills are these days !. Raised money for the government of the day at the time - short term-ism. Which is why no one has the stamina (or attention span) to see High Speed Rail through.

Welcome to privitisation in the UK. Even that bastion of capitalism, the United States, tends to keep things that make sense in state control under state control.

Anyone who has been to New York JFK, Newark, Miami, Atlanta, Orland, Los Angeles LAX or basically any other airport in the States has been to a government owned airport. And not Qatar/ Singapore/ Saudi's, but generally their local city or state government's.

I will admit, licences etc are lost on me.

Yes, it's all technical.

It's just which country licences the operation.

Ireland licences both SAS Connect and most of Ryanair's operation in the UK. That's perfectly legal given how they operate.

Yes Don Muang had awfull links to the rest of Bangkok - no dedicated rail link. Getting there did get better once the toll road opened. But yes you are right in that Suvarnabhumi got a Metro line before Don Muang.

You are right - I doubt very much that concerns about noise were relevant to the planning of a replacement for Don Muang at all so easy to keep it near the capital city. That won't be the case in the UK.

I know Don Muang was kept open for domestic flights (not sure what proportion but possibly non Thai Airways operators and that might have changed now).

They shut it completely as a commercial airport though the military base still operated as it does today. Though it only shut for a year over 2006-07 as they realised the new airport at Suvarnabhumi couldn't quite cope with demand.

Don Mueang peaked at 41 million passengers in 2019. It's been slow to recover as it served 31.7 million in 2025.
Suvarnabhumi also peaked in 2019 with 65.5 million. It served 62.9 million in 2025.
Both really hit by a drop in Chinese tourism which was at its zenith in 2019.

Don Mueang is now connected via public transport, but I would still take a Grab. If you're staying on Sukhumvit, you need to take the red line, then the MRT blue line, and then the BTS light green line. Three fairly awkward connections and three different tickets due to Bangkok's public transport being non-integrated. Eventually the ARL will link it to Suvarnabhumi via the city centre. That'll be a much easier option. Though the ARL is a different system with different tickets again.

When construction of the new airport started in the late 90s, that part of Bangkok was pretty sparsely population, but there's been significant construction since.

Any new London airport would be the same given the vast amount of workers needed at the airport. Britain as a country which doesn't build lots or quickly would struggle with that and I'd expect the airport to incredibly short staffed for years after opening. And it has to be remembered many are low-paid. It's unlikely a cleaner who lives in Hounslow earning £15 an hour is going to commute 90 minutes and spend £££££ each way.

Yes. Just too far away to be relevant for an airport in my view.

It's a non-starter in the UK.

There haven't been many projects like that in recent decades.

Istanbul's in 2019 was the most recent I believe with the closure of Ataturk. That required a dictatorship and a shed load of state money. It was also a bit of a disaster at the start.
Istanbul also has a second airport on the Asian side.

Athens in 2001 I suppose is the most recent in a democracy. Also a bit of a disaster like much of their Olympic games projects.

Berlin/ Beijing/ Chengdu's new airports were all in addition to the old one or consolidation on an already existing site, not transfers.


Why don't countries do it? Because it is exceptionally costly and generally insane.

 

[Magdalia]

Gatwick expansion lawful, court finds. Well fancy that...

BBC live reports here:

Gatwick Airport expansion approval was lawful, court rules

Campaigners fought the plans which were approved by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander in September 2025.

www.bbc.co.uk

Leave to appeal on the Gatwick expansion has been dismissed see here:

Campaigners denied appeal against Gatwick Airport expansion

An application to stop the two-runway operation is rejected, with judges calling it "unarguable".

www.bbc.co.uk

Campaigners have lost a bid to take their legal fight against the government over plans for a two-runway operation at Gatwick Airport to the Court of Appeal.

Last month, Barclay and Cagne asked the Court of Appeal to allow them to challenge the ruling, claiming that the judge was wrong.

But in a ruling on Tuesday, Lord Justice Holgate and Lord Justice Dove dismissed the appeal bids.

 

[camflyer]

So is that the end of the legal process or could there be yet more objections on other grounds?

 

[Magdalia]

So is that the end of the legal process or could there be yet more objections on other grounds?

These comments by those who applied for leave to appeal suggests yes:

Following the decision, Barclay said: "We are very disappointed with the Court's decision. We took this challenge as far as we could because we believed that the decision to allow Gatwick to expand was fundamentally flawed.

"It was not supported by government policy, would only serve to line the pockets of the airport and airlines, and would do so at the expense of local residents and the climate."

Cagne said: "Residents should be immensely proud of what they have achieved in holding Gatwick Airport's shareholders to account.

"This proposed new runway will come at a significant cost to both the taxpayer and the planet."

 

[sh24]

It is ridiculous than much needed national infrastructure get tied up in endless legal challenges.

 

[camflyer]

It is ridiculous than much needed national infrastructure get tied up in endless legal challenges.

It's standard tactics for campaigners against any infrastructure. Even if they don't think they have a chance of winning on legal grounds, their aim is just to drag out the process for so long that the costs keep going up to the point that the government finally changes its mind.

 

[The exile]

It's standard tactics for campaigners against any infrastructure. Even if they don't think they have a chance of winning on legal grounds, their aim is just to drag out the process for so long that the costs keep going up to the point that the government finally changes its mind.

Or thinks twice about the proposal that hasn’t actually been made yet.

 

[och aye]

One wonders if the approval of the expansion of Luton and now Gatwick getting across the final legal hurdle to activate the 2nd runway into operational use, is there an actual chance of that a third runway at Heathrow may actually be approved and built in the 2030s?

 

[camflyer]

One wonders if the approval of the expansion of Luton and now Gatwick getting across the final legal hurdle to activate the 2nd runway into operational use, is there an actual chance of that a third runway at Heathrow may actually be approved and built in the 2030s?

While the expansions at Gatwick and Luton (and the terminal expansion at Stansted) are welcome, none of them solve the problems at Heathrow which is lack of capacity for long haul connectivity.

There's a chance it gets approved by the 2030s but not a hope of it being built within the next decade.

 

[AlastairFraser]

While the expansions at Gatwick and Luton (and the terminal expansion at Stansted) are welcome, none of them solve the problems at Heathrow which is lack of capacity for long haul connectivity.

There's a chance it gets approved by the 2030s but not a hope of it being built within the next decade.

Is there a chance that Gatwick/Stansted get an opportunity to establish themselves as rival hubs in the meantime though?
I am aware that they will never reach the level of Heathrow/Frankfurt/CDG/Amsterdam, but they could abstract some traffic that would make the 3rd runway development financially untenable.

 

[Bald Rick]

Is there a chance that Gatwick/Stansted get an opportunity to establish themselves as rival hubs in the meantime though?

unlikely, especially for Stansted.

 

[AlastairFraser]

unlikely, especially for Stansted.

Certainly unlikely, I can certainly accept that, but there's already disquiet amongst the airlines about the impact of Heathrow expansion on fees.
I don't think it will take much to derail the entire scheme.

 

[Bald Rick]

but there's already disquiet amongst the airlines about the impact of Heathrow expansion on fees.

Naturally. But not enough to cause them to decamp to the Essex countryside. It is telling that Dubai and Amman are the longest haul flights from Stansted.

 

[AlastairFraser]

Naturally. But not enough to cause them to decamp to the Essex countryside. It is telling that Dubai and Amman are the longest haul flights from Stansted.

I won't drag this thread off topic further, but it will be interesting to see if the transit market with the Middle Eastern 3 holds up with a prolonged Iran war.
I think that may affect the possibility of Gatwick and Stansted gaining market share in the medium and long haul markets (following expansion).