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Gatwick airport news - April, 2008 |
An official report into BAA may force them to sell off one of their ‘big three’ London airports, due to a catalogue of failings by the Spanish owned company, and it is looking most likely to be Gatwick Airport.
The Competition Commission’s report is expected to support a major investigation into the way airports are regulated, recommended by the Office of Fair Trading. BAA owns 7 of Britain’s biggest airports, with 3 of these being the big London ones - Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted - which they have owned since 1987.
At Heathrow chaos ensued when the new security levels came in last year, and then the launch of the new Terminal 5 last month - which cost a staggering £4.3billion - was shambolic when the ‘state of the art’ baggage handling system failed. Since then, passengers have been enduring big queues at check-in and security, overcrowded conditions, and poor service from BAA, who have been accused of putting shops ultimately before service.
A Ryanair source commented: “The recent chaos at Terminal 5, the continuing long passport and security queues at Stansted, and the 47 per cent price increases at Gatwick clearly proves that the BAA monopoly over the London airports is bad for consumers, bad for passengers and bad for UK tourism."
Should Gatwick be sold to a rival firm, they would be in compete directly with Heathrow who are under crisis by charging airlines less money, resulting in more choice, better standards and even cheaper flights for passengers.
Chief Executive of BAA, Colin Matthews, acknowledged that improvements needed to be made and that the Terminal 5 fiasco was “bitterly disappointing”, but commented that Heathrow was a “pretty special case”.
The Competition Commission, who said they were “particularly concerned by its [BAA’s] apparent lack of responsiveness to the differing needs of its airline customers”, will suggest possible solutions in a further report later this year. |
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Despite winning £4,686 in damages in court last year, an air hostess was ordered to pay out almost £80,000 in legal fees yesterday by the Court of Appeal.
Lisa Carver twisted her ankle in 2003 when on her way back to Gatwick Airport, falling into a lift that had stopped 2ft below floor level. She sued BAA up to £20,000 due to the broken lift, after suffering torn ligaments and being off work for 4 weeks. BAA admitted liability offering her £4,520, but Ms Carver from Witney in Oxfordshire rejected the offer.
Following her pay out of £4,686 by the Central London County Court she was told to pay for her own legal bill of £80,000. She appealed but it was thrown out of court after being deemed ‘farcical’. |
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With the news that Zoom Airlines are launching new services twice a week to both Fort Lauderdale and San Diego starting May/June, comes the announcement that these new flights will create over 60 new jobs at Gatwick Airport.
Not only will it be the new flights creating jobs, but Zoom have also expanded their Canadian services and require more staff to support the increasing flights.
Zoom Airlines are said to be very happy with the with the growth of their transatlantic routes, and the creation of not only cabin crew positions, but also for pilots and engineers, greatly improving the employment figures in the district. |
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The number of passengers travelling through Gatwick Airport continued to grow in March this year, with over 2.8million people passing through, an increase of 8.1% in comparison to March last year.
BAA released the figures which also showed a continued increase of passengers flying to and from Ireland rising to 44.8%, whilst European scheduled traffic rose to 13.9% and European chartered to 12.4%. However, not all markets had an increase. Domestic fell by 3.4% and the North Atlantic market dropped another 0.3%.
easyJet, since taking over GB Airways, has become the biggest operating airline at Gatwick Airport, providing 62 domestic and European routes.
With a total of 12million passengers travelling through BAA’s UK airports in March, it has given an overall increase of 1.2%. |
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With concerns of the environment being a high priority for some, a poll by Eurostar has shown that short haul flying will be ‘socially unacceptable’ in the near future. When faced with the question of whether environmental concerns will have ruled out short haul flights providing they have the alternative of going by train, 37% of the poll takers ticked ‘agree or strongly agree’.
With no Eurostar terminal at Gatwick Airport, what could this mean for them? Well, with passenger figures showing last month that there was an increase, they shouldn’t have too much to worry about.
57% of the 2,246 YouGov pollers were worried about the environmental impact of a journey that was only 300-400 miles. 33% had more concerns about taking a short haul journey now than they did a year ago. But… only 1 in 20, that’s just 5%, said that these concerns would make them take the train over flying to destinations within the UK or close European countries within the next year or so. |
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With so many limited flights out of Gatwick to New York, it’s great news to hear that from 27 October this year, British Airways will start daily flights out of the airport as part of its new winter schedule.
BA currently only operate to JFK from Heathrow Airport with 55 weekly flights, so this new schedule will increase the flights out of London to JFK to 62 times a week.
“The new Gatwick service will give our customers even more choice when flying between New York and London.”, commented British Airways’ Executive Vice President, Robin Hayes. “Not only do we already have an extensive schedule from both JFK and Newark to Heathrow, but next year we will launch business-only flights to London City.”
However, in with the new and out with the old - British Airways are also ‘suspending’ their daily flights from Manchester to New York in October. Presumably, the Boeing 767 aircraft currently being used for those flights will be moved to Heathrow, which in turn will free up the Boeing 777 that is being moved from Heathrow to Gatwick Airport for its new flights.
There will also be some new BA short haul routes from Gatwick starting October, to Oporto and Valencia, and additional flights from Gatwick to Alicante and Turin. Warsaw flights will be moved back to Heathrow, so it all looks like change for BA come the winter. |
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A new ‘early bird’ weekday flight service has been launched by easyJet to Gatwick Airport from Belfast International Airport, leaving at 6.30am and arriving Gatwick at 7.55am.
The low cost airline currently runs four weekday flights to Gatwick from Belfast, broken up at times throughout the day, however it seems they have demand for this earlier time, presumably by business travellers.
easyJet also runs daily flights between other European airports and Belfast, such as Newcastle, Bristol, Edinburgh, Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Geneva. |
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With the decision by BAA to increase landing fees at Gatwick & Heathrow Airports, a number of airlines have announced that they intend to contest the decision to overturn it.
With a rise of 21% at Gatwick and 23.5% at Heathrow, the increases were far higher than were expected when the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced it was planning a ‘significant’ charge increase in November last year.
Both easyJet and bmi plan to launch a legal challenge to have the decision overturned, and easyJet have also said they don’t plan to hand over all of the increase at Gatwick until the outcome of the review is revealed.
Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair also issued a joint statement with easyJet and bmi saying the charges would “inevitably hurt customers”. The fee increase will mean each passenger paying £6.79 when landing at Gatwick, and £12.80 at Heathrow, with these set to expand even more over the next 5 years.
“We and other airlines have been incensed by the dramatic price increases that the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is allowing BAA to charge at Gatwick and Heathrow and have informed the CAA of our intention to challenge the Gatwick price rises through a judicial review.”, it was said in an easyJet statement.
The CAA said that the new price increases would allow BAA to “deliver genuine service quality improvements” for both the airlines and passengers.
A decision by the High Court could be made by the end of the year, providing it approves the application for a hearing. |
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