On 16 Jan, 08:36, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 21:22:31 on Thu, 15
Jan 2009, tim..... remarked:

International transfer business doesn't provide a lot to the UK
economy.

It "tops up" the long haul flights that wouldn't have been economic to run
otherwise. So the transfer passengers are assisting UK residents ability
to fly almost anywhere in the world daily.

I don't buy this argument.

Most of the places that business people want to fly to, that are currently
served from LHR, would have have more than enough frequency if they were
supported by the UK demand alone. *I accept that there are one or two places
(like say, Nairobi) that need connecting pax but most don't.

I disagree. It's not hard to find destinations with less than one flight
a day (ie 3 or 4 per week), or where it's clear that a service can only
be supported from major hub cities (with transfer passengers feeding
in).

A recent example is Hyderabad (India's Silicon Valley) where until the
end of last year the only direct flights from Europe were one a day from
AMS and FRA, but BA has now added a daily flight from LHR.

Claiming that we need 10 flights a day to FRA so that Germans can connect
onto flights to NYC (or Americans in the reverse direction) is a nonsense,
yet because of the way that tickets are sold, I bet quite a few do.

The issue here isn't flights to popular destinations like NYC (where you
can also fly to from Manchester, as well as dozens of direct flights
already from LHR). Obviously, the more places are served direct from
London, the less people have to hop over to FRA if that's the only place
with an onward service.

And those direct flights from London need to be supported by transit
passengers from elsewhere in Europe (that don't have their own direct
flights).


This is ultimately what it's all about, is it not? Basically the idea
is that London and hence Britain benefit from being the crossroads to
anywhere (or at least the air travel equivalent of such!).

(Though I suppose to an extent there is a separate but connected
argument of there being a critical mass of passengers from the UK
using Heathrow as opposed to flying direct from a regional airport -
of course those regional airports generally don't offer flights to
more obscure destinations, but the critical mass of passengers using
LHR may well mean that the frequency of flights to less-obscure
destinations is greater.)

I certainly understand this transfer passenger argument and by no
means do I discount it, but I guess essentially my take on it is a bit
different - which is basically ok, so London will lose (or never get
in the first place) some direct flights to obscurer destinations in
the world, but to what extent does that matter? How badly would this
really affect business in Britain? I wouldn't suggest it would have no
effect, but I can't help but think that the supposed ill-effects on
British business are simply overblown.

What's more I would further put forward the argument that there is a
quality-of-life versus (big) business calculus in play here, and if
some of these travellers to obscurer destinations were not in fact to
make that trip at all (as opposed to making it via a transfer as AMS,
CDG or wherever) then there is also a environmental effects versus
(big) business calculus in play as well.

Incidentally the quality-of-life argument basically revolves around
how many people would be affected by aircraft noise (the far broader
quality-of-life relating to environmental damage from CO2 emission
argument is really part of the latter calculus concerning
environmental effects), and also by the levelling of a town to make
way for the runway. There are some quite different takes on this -
John B's take in a previous discussion was basically that only a
relatively small number of people are affected by this, whilst I
essentially fundamentally disagreed with this and think the noise has
a far wider effect over a lot of London and western Home Counties (if
you really want you can read what we both had to say in this recent
uk.r thread [1]).

Of course I could be wrong. I guess at least part of the counter
argument runs like this - Britain is just a small island in northern
Europe which essentially has to survive and has prospered on it's
wits. It is significantly helped in this regard by the fact that
English is a 'world language' (or should that be pure accident of
English being a world language?!), but it has no intrinsic right to
find itself to the forefront of world affairs and business. In order
to maintain and grow on its position and success it has to stay on the
ball and ensure that it remains in the game - securing Heathrow as one
of the major crossroads of the world means that London and Britain
benefit from this.

As I said above, I'm simply not entirely convinced by this argument.
For example, everyone said Frankfurt would become the European centre
of finance after the Euro was established and London would be left out
in the cold - this didn't happen (and instead it was many fine British
minds that helped to devise house of cards style financial instruments
but we'll leave that point well aside!). That said, there are some
speculating that Frankfurt the understudy is waiting in the wings
ready to pounce on London as soon as the global economy gets back on
the up, and perhaps better air connections to Frankfurt would help in
this regard when for example a company is choosing where to locate. (A
further argument some might come out with is something like
'whatever', let Frankfurt play host to the financial services circus
instead - but then we'd kind of need to work out what we could do to
replace that sector in Britain, though of course in many ways perhaps
we need to be looking at being good at doing some other sorts of stuff
anyway!)

What happens at Heathrow does rather seem to depend upon who wins the
next general election - and I dare say the present government's
decision to press ahead on the third runway may be a contributory
factor in them not being re-elected - though of course how big the
'Heathrow factor' will be in the eyes of the electorate remains to be
seen - will it just be a very local issue, or will it be a factor for
a rather larger number of voters. This last question can basically be
seen as a variant on the disagreement that John B and I had over how
will be affected by the expansion of Heathrow - he might say that it's
only really a niche issue, I would respond by saying it's a rather
wider concern than that. (Though I don't really want to put words into
John's mouth as he's perfectly capable of speaking for himself!)


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[1] "Gatwick second runway again" - uk.r thread from December '08:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....06bd255bb0d0e/