London City Airport Flourishes as Too Good to Shadow Heathrow
London City Airport Flourishes as Too Good to Shadow Heathrow
By Thomas Penny
Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) — Hubert Doefler relaxes in a leather armchair at London City Airport, waiting for a flight to Zurich as his colleagues browse the gift shop.
“I hate Heathrow because it’s so complex and messy,” says Doefler, an associate medical director with Zurich-based pharmaceutical company Nycomed International Management GmbH who also uses Heathrow, London’s biggest airport. “It’s confusing and there are too many people. It’s much more relaxed here.”
City’s departure lounge, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the site of the 2012 Olympic village, is dotted with plants and is less than half full as about 200 people work on laptops or BlackBerrys. There are no queues, and screaming children are so rare the sound of an upset toddler turns heads.
That calm may be shattered by plans to expand the airport to accommodate 3.9 million passengers by 2010 and 8 million by 2030, triggering concern among patrons and protests from locals who say they were promised the facility would always remain small and quiet. The airport, 18 minutes by train from Canary Wharf, the business district that’s home to Barclays Plc and Clifford Chance LLP, handled 2.9 million passengers last year.
“There is a limit to how far you can expand the capacity without killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Howard Wheeldon, an analyst at BGC Partners LP in London. “At the moment it takes around three-quarters of an hour from arriving at the door to actually boarding your airplane, and that’s remarkable.”
Business Attraction
At Heathrow, which handles 68 million passengers a year, crowds and security delays mean Wheeldon allows more than two hours to get to his plane. The airport sports signs advising visitors to leave as much as 45 minutes to reach far-flung gates.
Officials at City, which also has a corporate-jet operation, say they plan to keep the facility attractive to business people. The airport is owned by American International Group Inc., Credit Suisse Group and General Electric Co.
“We’ve got to maintain ourselves as fast and efficient because that’s what our customers want,” said Charles Buchanan, City’s strategy and communications director. “We need to allow them to do in a day what takes a day and an overnight stop in other places.”
Growth is already affecting City Airport’s reputation for efficiency. In 2004, when there were 52,762 flights, 82 percent were on time. In the 12-month period through November 2007 there were 76,079 flights, with 65 percent on time, according to data published by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority. In four months last year, Heathrow had a better on-time record.
Airport officials say proposed new flight paths should ease the problem.
Noisier Aircraft
City’s expansion plan, which needs permission from the London borough of Newham, where the airport is located, indicates there will be more frequent flights and noisier aircraft using the facility. The airport says it has no plans for night flights and will continue to insulate homes affected by noise.
Members of a group called Fight the Flights recently gathered in a community hall to map out their strategy to stop the expansion. Speakers among the 36 people at the meeting struggled to be heard over the sound of planes taking off.
Before the airport opened in 1987, developers said it would be limited to 36,500 propeller-plane flights a year. Opponents who said there could be as many as 200 flights a day were denounced as “wholly unrealistic.” The latest expansion application calls for an average of 329 flights a day, most of them jet aircraft, though the airport will remain shut for 24 hours each weekend.
Every 90 Seconds
Fight the Flights is considering legal action and leading calls for public hearings.
“What they’re proposing would mean a flight every 90 seconds in peak time,” says group organizer Neil Pearce, who lives near the end of City’s runway. “We’re not demonizing the airport. What we want is the status quo and an acknowledgement that they have a corporate responsibility to the communities around them.”
Opponents say they have reason to be concerned as promises made over the expansion of other airports have been broken.
When Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, opening next month, received government approval in 2001, it was on condition that flights would be limited to 480,000 a year, a level at which there would be no need for a third runway. Now the government has announced plans for a third airstrip and a sixth terminal.
Buchanan says many neighbors support the expansion of City Airport because it will be good for the local economy.
“Any development is a balance between the benefits it brings to an area and its less beneficial effects,” he says. “There will be 1,000 jobs and additional investment in the area. It’s the role of the planning system to balance that.”
BA to New York
City is already building for the future. The airport is adding more stands to let four additional aircraft park, and the existing terminal building is being adapted to increase departure lounge capacity to 750 from 500. On Feb. 1, British Airways Plc announced it would start business-only, one-stop flights from City Airport to New York.
In the departure lounge, Beatrice Van der Heijden, director of research and doctoral programs at the Maastricht School of Management, nurses a beer as she waits for a flight to Amsterdam.
“I don’t understand why people fly to Heathrow from Amsterdam when they need to be in the city center,” she says. “This is so much closer.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in London tpenny@bloomberg.net Tracy Alloway in London at talloway@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 28, 2008 19:04 EST
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