Today wasn’t the first time, I’d been to the airport by bus, as when we were in our teens, a couple of times, we went to the airport by bus on a Saturday or school holiday. We went all the way round the houses on about six buses, finishing with a 140 to the airport. It was all for a few shillings on a Red Rover ticket.
A couple of times too, C and I went to the airport by coach from Newmarket, as in some ways it was quite convenient. Now, I just take the train or the Tube.
But after today’s crowded and slow journey on the Piccadilly line, I feel strongly, that Crossrail is needed now.
April 4, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Buses, Crossrail, Heathrow Airport, Trains |
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I’m sitting here listening to the radio at one in the morning, as the drama at Heathrow unfolds.
So no-one has been killed and it’s only the usual chaos caused by rather heavy snow and cold weather, that happens about one in four hundred days or so at Heathrow.
These things happen and you have to have a plan for recovery when it does.
In this instance, the following statements have been made on BBC Radio 5 Live, by professional journalists acting on behalf of their listeners and those stuck at Heathrow.
1. Passengers after being stuck on a plane for several hours are finding, the Help Desk has closed.
2. The phone-in Help Desk has also closed.
3. The staff in Terminal 5 have gone home.
4. Baggage is stuck on the plane.
5. Passengers are being given no help to get a hotel.
6. Stephen Nolan was also trying to get British Airways on the phone to his radio program before it closed at one in the morning. He failed.
The only excuse, British Airways and Heathrow have is that the weather is unprecedented and they can’t get any more staff to the airport.
But where are just a few staff at Heathrow working through a plan to at least sort out the more pressing problems?
It would appear that British Airways and Heathrow, didn’t have any plans to handle such an extreme situation.
So if this weather was unforeseen, why wasn’t their trouble at Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham and Manchester. There was a couple of problems at Belfast City and Bristol airports involving low-cost airlines, but nothing on the same proportionate scale.
In fact the problems at Heathrow seem to be centred only on British Airways Terminal 5, with the runways and the other terminals seemingly working without major trouble.
I would argue that all airports and airlines must have disaster plans, after all they are very vulnerable from incidents like a blocked runway or perhaps a strike in a critical area like baggage handling or air traffic control.
Admittedly, there has also been a lot of trouble on the roads. But nothing on the scale of the problems at Terminal 5.
The trains have been affected too, but they generally made the sensible decision to run a reduced timetable and asked people to think twice before travelling. Buzz Aldrin arrived safely in Scotland in good spirits as reported here, although the train might have been thirty minutes late. But then that is minor compared to the problems at Heathrow.
Sometimes I think, I’ve made two sensible decisions since my stroke; to not drive and not to fly long haul. There are millions of places worth seeing within the UK, Ireland and the nearer parts of Europe.
I just can’t see any point in having all the hassle of a boring long-haul flight!
January 19, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
News, Transport/Travel | British Airways, Flying, Heathrow Airport, Trains |
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It is reported in the Sunday Times under the headline, Steeper descents to cut jet noise, that the National Air Traffic Service are looking at getting aircraft to fly steeper descents into London’s airports, to reduce noise. They already fly into London City airport at a angle of 5.5% as opposed to the 3% at all other airports. As a former pilot, who used to be an avid reader of the aviation press, I seem to remember too that the separation at US airports, was less than that in the rest of the world.
As planes these days are effectively very accurately flown by computer with the pilot only there to push the buttons and if anything goes wrong, surely we could squeeze more flights into an airport like Heathrow.
The problem is that you might get nearly twice the flights over your house, but the total noise you’d experience would be the same or slightly less.
How people would react I do not know. I don’t get many flights over my house, but on a clear day, I notice most of them! Not that they are particularly annoying.
December 9, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, Flying, Heathrow Airport |
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The Sunday Times is saying today, that it would be quicker to build a completely new airport in the Thames Estuary, than to add a third runway to Heathrow.
I’m not sure, but I do know that project planning engineers always have ways of building things faster, if they look at a problem in depth.
If we look at Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong, that was effectively built in eight years. That is a massive airport and involved a similar type of construction to say building an island in the Thames Estuary with two terminals and four runways. Admittedly Hong Kong didn’t have to deal with our planning system.
But hopefully, there will be less planning problems with putting an airport in the middle of the estuary, as several have proposed, like this guy.
To get another estimate on the minimum construction period, look at the London Gateway port. They estimate a construction period of about 10-15 years.
The Sunday Times says that a report has said, that the Thames Estuary airport would take 14 years to build and a new runway at Heathrow would take twelve.
Given that the third runway at Heathrow doesn’t solve any of the other airport problems like moving traffic away from London and good passenger access from a lot of the UK, it would appear that this report bangs a big nail in the third runway at Heathrow’s coffin.
There are several things that all of these plans ignore.
The first is flood protection for London. The Thames Barrier should give protection until 2060-70, but it would need to be supplemented or replaced in the future. An estuary airport could be designed to eventually incorporate another flood barrier.
The M25 is not the best designed of roads with a real pinch point at the Dartford Crossing. Every estuary airport proposal incorporates road and rail links to both Kent and Essex, which would add a lot more capacity between the Channel Tunnel and the Midlands and North.
So a properly built estuary airport would probably take longer to build than they have planned at present.
On the other hand, none of the estuary airport proposals seem to pay much attention to the handover from Heathrow. Would it be on a one-night basis as the changes in Hong Kong or Paris or would it be on a gradual basis, as the airport was completed?
This is where the project planners come in.
I suspect that the optimal would be somewhat different to any of the proposals.
Remember that Brits are rather an inventive nation and a cussed lot to boot, so the obvious solutions wouldn’t happen. There would be so much inertia to keep Heathrow, as moving it would effectively change the working lives of millions of people.
So perhaps the most cost-effective solution would be to build the road and rail links from Kent to Essex and create the island for the airport in the first phase. These would improve transport links from the UK to the Continent and take a lot of pressure off the roads in the south-east of England.
The road and rail links would also join the massive port and logistics centre at London Gateway directly to the Continent and probably to the North and Midlands as well. At present, it’s assumed they can fit the trains on the tracks through London, that are shared with the London Overground. Fat chance, that’ll work well!
I’ve not done any calculations and I am just kite-flying, but I’d like to see this planned and costed.
Once proper road and rail links are there, they would make the building of the new airport a lot easier. It might even be started as a cargo airport, if that is where the most urgent need is, as it is ideally suited for that because of its position.
Only when the traffic requirements become known, will we build the airport.
One things that strikes me, is that most pushing extra airport capacity in the South-East have vested interests.
As an example, airlines see railways as competition. Could this explain why the UK’s rail link to the Continent was designed not to annoy them? A rational design might have driven the High Speed link to the Channel Tunnel right under London with stops at Stratford, Kings Cross/St. Pancras/Euston, Paddington and Heathrow. But that would have annoyed the airlines. And probably the French as well, who would want passengers in North East France to use Charles de Gaulle rather than Heathrow.
The French will probably fight an estuary airport with a vengeance.
I actually think that in the end, we’ll stick with what we’ve got! Although, I do think that a road and rail liknk across the Thames estuary will be built. Let’s face it, the Dutch would have done it years ago, if only to protect London from flooding.
September 2, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Flying, Heathrow Airport, London Gateway, London Overground, Project Management |
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So what?
After all this is supposed to be a Green Games, so shouldn’t athletes and official be using trains to get to Stratford. The original plans for the Heathrow Express called for the trains to go to St. Pancras as well as Paddington. So what happened to that? Here‘s a press release from Railtrack.
If the Heathrow Express to St. Pancras, had connected to ThamesLink, in say a simple cross platform interchange, that would have been the quick way to get between London’s two biggest airports.
July 13, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Heathrow Airport, Olympics, Paddington Station, Roads, St. Pancras Station, Thameslink, Trains |
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It would appear that Virgin Atlantic want to set up a short haul airline from Heathrow, according to reports like this.
Now with a lack of runway capacity at the airport, surely we don’t want short-haul flights, but long-haul ones!
Especially, as the Channel Tunnel and its trains are not running at full capacity.
But then if an airline wanted to run trains from London to Paris, the French would probably find a way to block it.
July 9, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Channel Tunnel, Flying, France, Heathrow Airport |
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You don’t have to wait long before a story about London’s airports comes about. Today, there’s story about a protest from the people of Kent about the Mayor of London’s support for an airport in the Thames Estuary.
They protestors actually recommend the following ideas.
- A high speed rail link between Gatwick and Heathrow.
- Improved rail connections to other regional airports.
- A second runway at Gatwick after 2019.
- Development of other regional airports, like Manston and Lydd.
This I suppose is something as usually protestors are very negative.
I should say that although, I don’t do it now, I’ve flown many times over Kent in a light aircraft and it is actually surprising how much green space there is. Now, I’m not saying we concrete it all over, but how many of those who fought the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or the M2 and M20, ten or so years ago, are still fighting them. I think this shows, that if you build rail and road links sympathetically, you actually get people on your side, as they are the ones that often benefit most from the new links.
So let’s look at their proposals in turn.
1. The Gatwick to Heathrow Rail Link
Heathrow is supposed to be on a spur to the new HS2 line from London to Birmingham. But why can’t the spur go right under Heathrow and on to Gatwick? Thoughts on the subject by civil servants are here in the Telegraph.
Thinking even more radically, you might even start HS2 at some point on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and then it could encircle London to the South West with stations at Gatwick, Woking and Heathrow.
One of the great advantages of a Gatwick to Heathrow link is that you separate London bound passengers from those, who are not going to the capital or even taking a connecting flight.
2. Improved Connections to Other Regional Airports
Once we have completed Thameslink and Crossrail, a lot of this will have been established. Journeys between airports like Gatwick and Luton, Heathrow and Southend will be no changes or just one. Even Gatwick to Heathrow will only be one change at Farringdon station.
In fact, will these two modern railways, with big trains revolutionise the way people travel through London.
Imagine, you are a businessman travelling from say San Francisco to Qatar. American Airlines seems to book you via London, where you change planes. You might find after an eleven hour or more flight, that staying in a good hotel in the centre of the best city in the world is a good alternative to carrying on. After all even now Gatwick to Farringdon is just 40 mins and Heathrow to Farringdon is quoted as 30 mins on the Crossrail site, when that line opens.
So could this simple route via Farringdon, demolish the case for a high-speed rail link between Gatwick and Heathrow? It certainly will for those, who can afford to spend a night in a good London hotel or want to stay over. Farringdon is of course a short taxi ride or a one-stop train journey from most main line terminal stations.
One of the things that would make Farringdon a better interchange is some more hotels in the area. But even so, it’s not a bad location for a transport interchange. It’s also next to the wife market in Smithfield and on a more legal level from the best of London’s lawyers.
So perhaps we’ve got the CrossRail/Thameslink railways right
3. A second runway at Gatwick after 2019
I used to fly a lot and was an avid reader of Flight International. Years ago, an airline pilot proposed building a second runway at Gatwick, by building over the M23 and putting that in a tunnel underneath. The runway would have been North-South, which is an unusual direction for the UK, but would only have been used for take-off in a southerly direction.
He had a point and it shows how if you think radically, you may come up with better solutions.
But in my mind Gatwick is the place to put extra runway capacity in the South-East of England. Flights tend to avoid flying over the capital and the rail links, when they are finished will be good.
4. Development of other regional airports, like Manston and Lydd
It’s interesting to see the people of Kent wanting to take their share of the development. I suppose they understand the benefits a large airport will bring.
Manston airport could be easily connected to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and as it has a long runway. But that’s about it. Financially, it has always been a failure, but it is there for things like maintenance and freight.
Lydd airport is one of those places that grew up after the Second World War to serve a short-hop-to-France market. It does a bit more now, but would not be an airport of my choice.
However saying that about Lydd, over the previous few months, Southend airport has been developed from a small field to a proper airport, with easyJet as an operator. It has a rail link to Liverpool Street station in London, which takes about 50 minutes. But Southend has quite a large catchment area including East London, Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich, with good rail and road links. To a certain extent, it will take business from Stansted.
In fact you can now see a pattern developing of London’s airports. The two big ones; Heathrow and Gatwick are badly placed and you wouldn’t put them there now, but remember, the capacity will rise as more and more airlines use larger and larger aircraft at these airports. I can see a time, when these airports completely ban 737’s and the like. I’ve just found, that you can fly Heathrow to Paris in a small Airbus 319. Surely, we need to improve the rail links, so more passengers take the train.
Around these two large airports, a ring of smaller ones is developing.
- Stansted, which is big enough to take long-haul, is still considered a low-cost airline airport
- Luton, which is very much a low-cost airline and charter airport
- City, which is an ideally placed short-haul business airport
- Southend, which is developing into another low-cost airline airport
What is missing, is a low-cost airline airport, or even a business airport like City to the west, with good quick connections to Heathrow. A third shorter runway at Heathrow might have worked for the latter.
I think though on balance, that we shouldn’t take any serious decisions about expanding Heathrow or replacing it with an airport in the Thames Estuary, until CrossRail and Thameslink are fulkly operational and the plans for HS2 are finalised.
May 12, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
News, Transport/Travel | Airports, Crossrail, Flying, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, High Speed Two, King's Cross Station, St. Pancras Station, Trains |
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Joan Collins was on BBC Breakfast this morning plugging a book.
I actually met her once in the queue for Immigration at Heathrow, after we’d both flown in from the United States. All I can say, is that she looked a lot better this morning, as I suspect she’d had time to do her make-up properly.
She did ask me a favour in the queue at Heathrow, which I declined. but then I never light anybody else’s ciggie. Or even one for myself, for that matter! Even if it belongs to Joan Collins!
March 12, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Health, Transport/Travel | Celebrity, Heathrow Airport, Smoking |
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Simon Calder is one of my favourite writers and his piece on Saturday on the M25 in the free Independent, I got from East Coast was excellent.
I particularly liked this bit.
Time for coffee. No service station graces this stretch of the M25, but handily the coffee bar with the best view in the South-east is just a juggernaut’s shudder from Junction 14. The location is on the departures level of Heathrow Terminal 5. As you wander over from the car park, you can look west to Windsor Castle. And a window seat provides you with a view over one of the busiest runways in the world. On the apron below, Airbuses beetle about, while every minute or two a Boeing whizzes past the window, carrying hundreds of people with stories from afar – some of which would no doubt be told as the M25 guided them home with their meeters and greeters.
It sounds like a place to visit. But I suspect Simon’s publicity means it will be very busy!
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September 29, 2010
Posted by AnonW |
Food, Transport/Travel | Coffee, Heathrow Airport, London, Roads |
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Since I’ve had the stroke, I try to make things easier for myself.
Take yesterday, as I had to get to Heathrow for BA 027 that left at 21:25, I decided that it would be a good idea to get my taxi to drop me at Whittlesford to catch the 16:30 train for Tottenham Hale. There it was to be the Victoria Line and Piccadilly Line to the airport for about an eighty-minute ride with just one walk across the platform at Finsbury Park.
But two things happened.
I forget to take my driving licence and we had to go back. It was only a delay of about five minutes, but it made things tight.
And then the automatic machine at the station wouldn’t serve me any suitable ticket. What I wanted was an open return with my Senior railcard. In the end I settled on a single to Tottenham Hale. I know in the cost of the this trip, it is a small thing, but if you do look after the pennies, you can afford to do the bits where the style is worth it!
I’d been on the train for a couple of minutes, when I noticed the train was going to Broxbourne. Weird! Then I found out the lines were down and it would be a bus from Broxbourne to Cheshunt.
Oh! Well!
I still had plenty of time. But then we waited and waited outside Harlow for well over half-an-hour after a bit of a crawl from just before Bishops Stortford. I was starting to get worried. I do seem to worry more, but perhaps it’s just worried about being worried and stressed. Perhaps, I should try Yoga!
We got to Harlow about six and I saw a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the Tube. I had thought about Redbridge or Walthamstow, but he suggested rightly that Epping would be better.
And so I had a marathon ride from one end of the Tube network to the other with just a change from the Central Line to the Piccadilly Line at Holborn. I was safely in Heathrow at eight-fifteen after an hour and three quarters and forty stations. Note that this isn’t far out from the formula of two minutes a station and fibve minutes for a change.
I wish though that I’d missed the first train. I would have found out what had happened and the taxi could have taken me to Cambridge, where I could have gone to Kings Cross at speed.
But I didn’t! In the end nothing really happened except more stress than I wanted, which could have been avoided by better thought on my part and better information on that of National Express.
52.245212
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May 12, 2010
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airlines, Heathrow Airport, Trains |
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The Anonymous Widower 