Nostrildamus (D)

Infratil don’t want night flights... they just want the shoulder periods.

Please bear in mind: Infratil have grown into a billion dollar company as a result of being noticeably better at both strategy and risk assessment than most of the other major international players. This does of course mean that they are significantly better on both counts than TDC.

Air freight is carried (mostly) in the belly of large passenger aircraft flying into busy passenger airports. A small proportion of freight arrives in dedicated freight-only aircraft. Manston is the 5th largest airport in the UK for receiving the second type of freight. It's doing the best it can in what is essentially a niche market, but will need some kind of advantage or Unique Selling Point (USP) if it's going to be any better than 5th.

From the airport owner's point of view, day time flights are a breeze whereas night flights are a pain in the backside. Day time flights are effectively unrestricted. Night flights will only be permitted within the framework of whatever S106 agreement TDC can cobble together and make stick. A whole new suite of monitoring, record-keeping and accountability would be triggered by scheduled night flights. The quota count system being suggested immediately makes scheduled nights flights a finite resource and potential limitation on growth and success.

BUT. See that - it's a big but. There are the "shoulder periods" that Infratil have conjured up and woven into their preposterous proposal, which are explicitly excluded from the night flight tallying and monitoring. Flights in the "shoulder periods" don't count as night flights - it's just a longer (unrestricted) day.

Hurrah! Infratil already have blanket permission for late (or should that be "late") arrivals during the night. With the longer day and shorter night that the magical "shoulder periods" bring, the plausible spill-over at either end of the shortened night start to join up in the middle. All of a sudden, Manston becomes (almost) a 24 hour freight airport, which is exactly the kind of USP that they need to creep above 5th in the table of freight importers.

"Nostrildamus nose the future"