"Recliner" wrote in message
...
"tim......" wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 19:39:01 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 20:21:52 on Tue, 17
Dec 2013, tim...... remarked:
Intra UK transit pax are not the problem. It's the perceived need to
steal pax from other European carries at major European "hubs", that
is

I was researching flights to SA the other day and it is 20% cheaper to
fly LHR-FRA-CPT with LH than it is to fly FRA-CPT

OTOH it is 20% cheaper to fly FRA-LHR-CPT with BA than it is to fly
LHR-CPT.

So the reason that LHR needs to be a hub is because BA (apparently)
can't fill a plane from LHR to CPT without "bribing" pax from Germany
to fly via London.

You really don't understand yield management, do you?

It's about selling the highest priced fares to people who insist in
direct flights, then filling the remaining seats with people on feeders
from nearby. The result maximises revenue, even if some people get
cheaper flights as a result of agreeing to be those indirect
passengers.


Regardless , the whole motive behind blighting somewhere in the
southeast
with another runway seems to be so that airlines and BAA can make more
profit.
It has zilch to do with the UK economy other than the small amount of
extra
corporation tax it would deliver which would be more than ofset by the
billions
it would cost to build the thing in the first place even with partial
private
finance. Its a cynical campaign by private corporations for the
government to
spend huge amounts of public money on some infrastructure that will
benefit
almost no one economically except themselves and their shareholders.

And their customers,

there some double counting here you have mentioned them again (below)

employees

So a new runway at LHR will cause them to give they employees a rise will
it?

and suppliers.

OK I accept this

And those customers will
include businesses that gain from direct flights to secondary cities in
places like China and South America.

There is no proof that:

a) this will happen
b) that it wont happen if the extra runway is somewhere else

I don't buy this need to fly to dozens of regional airports in China. Most
of the companies that contract with UK companies are going to be located in
the "enterprise" areas that are probably already well served by flights.
The (likely) reason that other EU airports have links to more Chinese
airports is because of the demand from the Chinese to come here as tourists,
but we discourage that with our strict visa rules so they chose to go to
other parts of Europe instead. (I'm not saying that's right, but if it
doesn't change I don't believe that more destinations in China would be
served from LHR, if it did have more capacity).

tim