Why Heathrow Is Now More Vulnerable To International Competition?

Heathrow has been running at virtual 100% capacity for some considerable time and

only the slightest disruption causes a snowball affect with passengers pouring through the doors in an endless stream.

The airport is much like the maligned M25 where the slightest interruption to the flow of traffic caused by a simple breakdown, motorway repair or accident transforms it from a motorway to a slow moving car park.

The speed with which this happens is quite staggering with miles of queuing cars occurring within minutes. The reason for this is simply there is no slack to cope and the same goes for Heathrow which following a few cancellations turns the terminals into a solid mass of people which does not portray the best of images.

For years Heathrow has been the world's second busiest airport behind Atlanta, but during 2010 slipped to fourth being overtaken by Beijing and O'Hare Chicago. The strength of Heathrow has always been its location for connecting international travellers but these now have the option of using Paris, Amsterdam or Madrid all of which have far more capacity.

Amsterdam has five runways and Paris and Madrid four yet Heathrow has to manage on just two runways which means the pressure is on all the time to manage current levels never mind expansion.

The coalition government overturned the previous Labour Governments approval for a third runway claiming that the building of a high speed internal runway will lessen the number of internal flights from Heathrow creating extra capacity for international flights.

The thinking behind this is possibly alright for the UK traveller but not for the international traveller who may fly into Heathrow to connect to say Edinburgh. They will fly to Amsterdam and then connect to Edinburgh. Why would they want to go by train which will take twice as long?

The financial centre supports Heathrow and vice versa and unless Heathrow can continue to compete not only is the Government putting Heathrow in jeopardy but also the city of London and therefore the largest contributor to the country's prosperity.

by: David Cook

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