The world's busiest bus station

If, like me, you spend time in west London, you will be used to the pretty constant stream of aircraft passing overhead, at least when the wind is from the west.  This is inbound traffic to Heathrow, variously claimed to be the busiest, or perhaps busiest international, or just most depressing airport.

A problem with Heathrow is that it only has two runways.  Except when someone crashes an aircraft on one of the runways and blocks it, one runway is used for landing and the other for take-off.  With only two runways and lots of traffic, bad weather or other problems end up causing huge delays.

In other words, the airport is full.  The "slots" allowing an airline to run a flight at a particular time, are very valuable and change hands for substantial amounts of money,  leading to some odd behaviour.

Lots of airlines would like to run more flights, and BAA, which owns the airport (along with Stansted and Gatwick, the other main London airports) wants to make more money from selling stuff to the passengers trapped there, its main source of revenue.

As a result, there's a big argument about whether the airport should be granted permission to build a third runway. 

A third runway would break promises made by the UK government that there would be no further expansion of Heathrow after 5th terminal was built.  Terminal 5 was completed earlier this year but was not a resounding success.

More air traffic at Heathrow would breach air pollution rules, and mean that more conversations in west London would be interrupted by low flying aircraft.

The infrastructure around Heathrow is creaking.  If you travel to or from Heathrow by road, you will know just how frustrating this is.  Travelling from the west of England and Wales, you approach along the M4, a heavily overloaded motorway.  At peak times, you will probably be stuck in traffic for ages.  

Travelling from London means a journey that can take well over an hour from the middle of the City, sometimes much longer.  And from north or south, you are likely to encounter the M25, London's orbital motorway, where cars frequently become obsolete and their drivers old while waiting to reach their destination.

Aha, the proponents of Heathrow will shout.  But what about Heathrow Express?  Well, yes, there's now an excellent train service from Heathrow (£32 return, minimum, for a 15 minute journey.  It should be excellent).  

Heathrow Express takes you only to one destination, London Paddington.  If you want to go to Paddington, that's great.  If you're travelling elsewhere, like anywhere north of London say, you will then have to drag your luggage onto the tube and endure that for as long as it takes to get to St Pancras, Kings Cross or Euston station, depending on your destination.  

Oh, and if you're travelling to Euston, be prepared for a long walk or a complex journey as there isn't a direct line from Paddington.  Or you could get a cab.  Good luck.  Take some food and a hot drink to keep you going while you wait in the queue.

How does this compare to European countries that have a transport policy designed to actually move people around?  At Schiphol airport, near Amsterdam, there's a real railway station at the airport.  You can get trains to more than one place.  Same thing at Zurich.  No such luck at Heathrow.

The proposed third runway will do nothing to fix any of these problems.  BAA doesn't care; it just wants more shoppers.  

British Airways, which runs most of its flights from Heathrow, wants to be able to compete for more of the transfer passenger market - that is, passengers not travelling to London, but using it as a place to transfer from one flight to another on a longer journey.

Now we get to the nub of the problem.  Transfer traffic used to be a small proportion of Heathrow's business, less than 10% in the early 1990s.  It's now significant, at around 30%.  It is claimed that if the third runway isn't built, these passengers will go elsewhere. 

My immediate reaction is "good".

If the price of having these transfer passengers is another runway at Heathrow, I'm not sure I want them.  They don't do a whole lot for the UK economy if they never leave the airport.  Sure, British Airways will suffer and BAA will lose some shoppers, but perhaps that's a price worth paying.

What's so glamorous about an airport anyway?  It's nothing more than a glorified bus station, and I'm not too keep about having one of those in my back yard either.

At the margin, some routes that you can currently fly direct from Heathrow will go away and that will be an inconvenience for those concerned, but at least they will get to change planes in an airport that is better run and less likely to lose their bags than Heathrow is.