A reader writes

I should like to make a few points, of which Cllr Carter should be informed! Firstly, he says that Manston's runway is 2,752m. When I checked, it was 2,658m. Heathrow has two runways - 3,500m and 3,570m, with Gatwick's one at 3,750m. So nowhere near comparable.

He says that Manston "is able to cater for all modern jet aircraft"; that's all very well, but a fully-laden 747 or 767 could not safely take off because there is no room to abort a take off in case of problems. If you remember, an Afghan DC-8 almost came a cropper on 11th August 2010 when, as it was later discovered, it tried to take off 25,000 lbs overweight!

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Dream Council

This is what happens when a local council throws its weight into the fight against night flights, on behalf of the residents.

Wandsworth Council in London is a founder member of the 2M group, an all-party alliance of 24 local authorities concerned at the environmental impact of Heathrow expansion on their communities. The group, which took its name from the 2 million residents of the original 12 authorities, now represents a combined population of 5 million people.

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CAA: exemplary regulator or lickspittle lackey?

You decide...

The nice people at AirportWatch say:

The CAA (owned by airlines) produces advice to government to increase capacity in the south east. The CAA has now produced the third of its three “Insight Papers” for the DfT.  It hopes these will influence the formation of new UK aviation policy, on which a public consultation will start in March.

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CAA wants more runways

Once upon a time, I thought the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was independent. Hah! Fool.

I had assumed that as the regulatory body for the aviation industry, the CAA would be knowledgeable about (but independent of) the industry, and probably linked to the government (Dept of Transport?) in some way. No.

The CAA is entirely funded by the industry it regulates, and doubles up as an official-sounding (and well-funded) mouthpiece for the nation's propellor-heads. This explains why they keep churning out unquestioningly pro-aviation agitprop...

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Boris Island must never be able to get off the ground

Any new major airport near the Thames Estuary is impractical because of politics and birds

At first the idea of a new airport on, or even in, the Thames Estuary seemed to be just one of the Mayor of London's less amusing flights of fancy, but now the arrival of a proposal by the architect Norman Foster has given it some respectability. The idea of replacing Heathrow and moving east is not new. Forty years ago, Maplin Sands, off Essex, was held up as a possible site, but interest soon dwindled and the present proposals seem just as likely to fade when confronted by the real situation: that a new airport is both impractical and unnecessary.

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Flybe says UK's domestic air travel boom is over

Flybe has declared an end to the boom in domestic air travel as the regional airline reported a deepening drop in demand for British routes.

The Exeter-based carrier runs domestic services which include Manchester to Norwich and Aberdeen to Gatwick, but the fallibility of its business to UK demand has been underlined by two profit warnings this year.

Flybe avoided another surprise on earnings on Wednesday as it published first-half results, though an increase of pre-tax profits in the six months to 30 September of £8.2m to £14.3m had been forecast to be significantly higher at one point this year. Before the profit warnings, Flybe had been expecting to make £36m.

As well as the poor profits performance, the results contained a further admission of weakness in the UK market. Flybe said winter bookings were down 1% compared with last year, confirming a deterioration of sales on top of an already poor outlook. Only last month Flybe had forecast a 1% increase in winter bookings.

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YES WE CAN: monitor

Yes we can: the story so far… Infratil need Manston to be very busy; night flights are a bad thing; and the daytime flight paths must be designed to be as people-friendly as possible. So what happens next? Step aboard the time machine of your imagination, and gracefully swoop into the future…

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Freight over-stated

Nosey, picky

Infratil's silver-tongued spinners at Maxim PR told the world that Manston currently handled "33,000 tonnes of freight" when they trumpeted Infrapenny's MasterPlan (8th Oct 2008). Oops.

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EUJet doomed from the start

Expert claims airline was doomed from first flight

EUjet was a flawed business model that was bound to fail, according to an airline expert. The low-cost airline and its owner PlaneStation, which also owns Kent International Airport at Manston, crashed into administration on July 26 after the Bank of Scotland pulled the plug on PlaneStation’s credit line, thought to be around £25million.

The collapse left thousands of passengers stranded overseas, cost hundreds of jobs and cast a shadow over the longer-term viability of scheduled services operated out of Kent. It was also embarrassing to Kent County Council which had invested £100,000 in the fledgling airline to bring it to Manston.

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