'Mistake' To Expand Heathrow - Former BA Boss
The former chief executive of British Airways has said it would be a "costly mistake" to expand Heathrow Airport.
Bob Ayling, who was in charge of BA for four years until 2000, wrote in the Sunday Times that the proposals to develop the airport were "misguided" and that they were "against Britain's economic interests".
He warned the plans to develop the airport to include a third runway and sixth terminal - which were subject to a three-month consultation period that closed at the end of February - were being driven by the aspirations of British airlines and Heathrow's operator, the British Airports Authority (BAA), rather than any rational consideration of the long-term future of air travel.
He said the economic case that the government had presented was "flawed".
Calling the current passenger experience at Heathrow as "akin to the Third World", Ayling said any further development would make the problems currently seen at Heathrow in terms of overcrowding and delays even worse.
He argued that even if a third runway was built, "Heathrow will be full again within a decade of the opening of a third runway. How the airport will cope with 135m passengers a year and 702,000 flights after 2030 is not explained".
Airport Hub-and-Spoke Model
Ayling believes the government's plans to expand Heathrow into a major interchange to rival other major European hubs such as Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam was based on a flawed concept of trends in international air travel.
The former airline boss said the government was assuming "that Heathrow will attract more business and be more efficient if it acts as an interchange for passengers en route to other destinations", when this may not be the case.
Ayling wrote that the government's was assuming that a "hub and spoke" model, where passengers travelling between airports not served by direct flights change aircraft en route to their final destination, was the future for airports.
He argued the longer-term trend will be away from this hub-and-spoke and onto more direct, point-to-point services. He said the huge popularity of low-cost airlines proved this point.
Ayling said that basing the "economic case" on the interchange idea was also flawed, because the economic impact it would bring would be negligable. He wrote: "What Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, and the government do not see is that the transfer passengers, for whom such a hub would be built, spend no money in Britain, at least little beyond the price of a cup of tea".
Ayling's comments are far removed from the views of most senior figures in the industry, including the current British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh, who only last week reiterated his belief that further development at Heathrow was necessary to help the UK economy.
How To Solve "Heathrow Hassle"
Ayling said in order to best prepare Heathrow for the future, and to solve the delays known as "Heathrow Hassle", a break-up of BAA was needed. This, he argued, would "enable Heathrow and its airlines to focus on fewer flights, not more, turning away from the hub airport and towards flying passengers direct to their destinations...with fewer flights, Heathrow could focus on punctuality and service".
He said that "building a third runway at Heathrow is not the answer" to the airport's problems, and that it should instead be built at either Gatwick or Stansted.
Ayling also said reforms to aviation regulator Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) were also needed to help improve competition.
Source - Airport International's London Reporter
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