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[Lizzie Zoom]

  I note that BA are saying it will be YEARS before air travel recovers to pre virus levels. It will make the after affects of 9/11 seem like a picnic

good, we fly far too easily in modern times,

Maybe, but think of the consequences of all this on jobs, like Doctor Gollum’s, the Gatwick and Heathrow staff, the service industry, the aircraft maintenance crews, the aircraft builders, etc, etc!

It is going to be horrendous

We can go green, turn our backs on modernity, but then live through the worst recession the World has ever known with people, including children, starving on the streets.  Is that all worth it?

Last week it was rotting corpse on the streets, now it's starving children. Get a f**king grip.

I have got a grip Steve with the knowledge that in distant places, like India, there are already starving kids as the sweat shops, that at least used to pay their employees the local going rate, have shut down due to U.K., and other countries, retailers cancelling orders and not paying the contracted severance money.

Our, Europe’s, and America’s welfare state will support our poorest, made redundant, workers so long, but when the financial situation hits the buffers........already the food banks are overwhelmed...........so yes, even in good old Britain “starving kids” could well be a horrible reality.

If you cannot see that......

[LC0112G]

It's far from certain that the current problems will favour the smaller jets (B787/A350) over the huge ones (A380).

The idea of the smaller jets is that they can fly smaller numbers of people direct into more diverse airports. The A380 only works on key 'hub' routes where you fly to the nearest hub on an A380 and then change to a smaller jet (A320/B737) to fly the last hour or three to your actual destination.

Now if passenger numbers drop, then the hub/spoke scheme becomes more economic - instead of running 3 B787/A350's into 3 different places from Heathrow (say Las Vegas, San Fransisco & Phoenix), you run one A380 from Heathrow to (say) LAX, and then change connecting PAX onto smaller jets to get to LAS, SFO and PHX.

Passengers prefer direct flights, but the airlines can't run them unless the load factors justify it. If there aren't 250 passengers a day wanting to go from LHR-PHX then the B787/A350 flight won't be viable. However, packing and extra 100 passengers for each of LAS, SFO and PHX onto an already necessary LAX flight means you can keep the A380 full ish, and then use the cheaper short haul jets for those transit passengers to get to their final destination.

I've flown both A380 (SQ) and B787(AA) and would chose the A380 every time. Infact I'll be avoiding B787 in the future (if there is a future!).

[Doctor Gollum]

Your examples don't work from LGW as they are/were tradionally tourist routes operating B772/787s. Boeing built their hanger specifically to service the 777-10, and apart from China Airlines, Cathay was the only daily A350 service into LGW and that route got pulled indefinitely in early March.

It would be good to see someone like Jet2 establish a southern base, but that requires a market and sustainable growth. Neither of which are going to happen anytime soon.

The only A380 operator at Gatwick is very much a hub/spoke one, and that's Emirates. The bulk of their business is flying people to/from the Indian subcontinent via Dubai.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Very interesting and thanks, I am learning a lot about the airline industry and what may be to come

Ryan Air have now decided on massive job cuts of 3,000.


 The misery is only just starting!

[Rangie]

It is indeed going to be a very different world when this is over.

[Lizzie Zoom]

A question for both DG and LC0112G:

How many other jobs in all the services and support industries, from cabin cleaners to aircraft engineers, through to aircraft builders will be lost per thousand individual airline job cuts please?

Can it be calculated?

[Sir Tigger KC]

Slightly off topic, but aviation related and interesting nontheless. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/how-airlines-found-parking-for-thousands-of-planes-amid-coronavirus.html

[Lizzie Zoom]

Slightly off topic, but aviation related and interesting nontheless. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/how-airlines-found-parking-for-thousands-of-planes-amid-coronavirus.html

How much is all this aircraft parking costing I wonder?

[Doctor Gollum]

A question for both DG and LC0112G:

How many other jobs in all the services and support industries, from cabin cleaners to aircraft engineers, through to aircraft builders will be lost per thousand individual airline job cuts please?

Can it be calculated?

Not in those terms, a few airline jobs wouldn't result in job cuts at service providers.

That said, if a whole airline leaves an airport then the effect is obviously more pronounced.

In the case of British Airways, a company called GGS (Gatwick Ground Services) has a single contract: BA.

They provide all the ground handling and cabin cleaning services to BA and only at Gatwick. At a guess, that's 4-600 people straight out of the door. Their catering is provided by Newrest, again I believe only at Gatwick, so probably another 500-800 people or so. The laundry that cleans the blankets is up at Heathrow so probably won't be too badly affected beyond a drop in production.

BA does its own maintenance, so that will be a combination of redundancy, retirement and moving staff.

Associated services will suffer financially from the loss, for example fewer passengers means fewer customers for the shops/restaurants, but these won't automatically mean job cuts as they require staff to function.

The greatest financial loss out side of the direct airline operation will be to the airport with regards landing fees, and service provision (these charges are publically available on the Gatwick commercial website) such as parking (aircraft and staff), ID issuing, vehicle permits etc.

BA tends to operate its aircraft for 25-30 years, and they're currently mid way through upgrading their long haul fleets with B787, B777, A350.

The A380 is a slow, fat Concorde. A great idea, but a bit of a poisoned chalice. It's simply not a cost effective aircraft... You can't put 800 people in it because people demand a bit of luxury/space, so most are running around at less than two thirds of their potential. Also, they can't actually carry that much freight weight, which rules out freighter conversions.

Hence, for the last couple of years, most A380 operators have started dumping them in favour of more efficient twin engine wide body aircraft. Even Emirates cancelled the last of their orders for the A380, and they're the only airline who actually made it viable (in no small part due the fact theirs have amongst the highest passenger number configuration).

There won't be many left in service, if any by 2025.

[Doctor Gollum]

Slightly off topic, but aviation related and interesting nontheless. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/how-airlines-found-parking-for-thousands-of-planes-amid-coronavirus.html

How much is all this aircraft parking costing I wonder?

At Gatwick...

< 50 Metric Tonnes Per 5 minutes of chargeable parking time. £2.50
>= 50 & <= 200 Metric Tonnes Per 5 minutes of chargeable parking time. £5.00
> 200 Metric Tonnes Per 5 minutes of chargeable parking time. £10.00
Notes
(1) Weight category is based on an aircraft’s maximum take-off weight (MTOW).
(2) Parking is free between 22:30 and 04:59 UTC at all times of the year.
(3) A peak charge will apply to an aircraft which occupies a pier served stand between 05:00 and 22:29 UTC
from 1 April to 31 October. During this period of time, each minute will count as three minutes for the purpose
of calculating parking charges.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Thanks for all that info DG

Which ever way you look at it, times are going to be very difficult for the airline industry

Your figures certainly confirm what I believed; it is bloody expensive to run an airline and if you do the aim has to be to keep an airliner in the sky as many hours out of each 24 as you can

[LC0112G]

Your examples don't work from LGW as they are/were tradionally tourist routes operating B772/787s. Boeing built their hanger specifically to service the 777-10, and apart from China Airlines, Cathay was the only daily A350 service into LGW and that route got pulled indefinitely in early March.

It would be good to see someone like Jet2 establish a southern base, but that requires a market and sustainable growth. Neither of which are going to happen anytime soon.

The only A380 operator at Gatwick is very much a hub/spoke one, and that's Emirates. The bulk of their business is flying people to/from the Indian subcontinent via Dubai.

Yes - I agree, but I wasn't in general talking about Gatwick ops with A380. No-one operating A380 will want to fly out of LGW if they can get a slot at LHR instead. In the short term I see LGW reverting to mainly being a Charter and Lo-Co airport, with most scheduled services concentrating on LHR.

[Doctor Gollum]

The only sticking point is that there are only two sustainable tour operators flying their own fleets and one of them already has a base there... Tui.

When I first started in '95, there were at least 10 Charter carriers, plus BA, American, Continental, Emirates, Northwest, US Airways, Virgin, Delta, Avia, Zimbabwe, and several other carriers operating scheduled short-haul. 

Ironically, if Thomas Cook had been bailed out, they would have been perfectly positioned for kick starting the tourism industry. Instead, there's unlikely to be the capacity to meet demand...

[Sir Tigger KC]

Not about BA or Gatwick but aviation related. 

An interesting account of travelling from the UK to Israel in Covid times, by Mark Stone who is the Middle East correspondent for Sky News 

https://threader.app/thread/1257634299072970754

It seems the Israeli's have taken a completely different approach to bio-security at their borders to the UK. 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Which may go some way to explaining why the UK is second only to the U.S. in death toll figures.
We are an island*, and a relatively small one. We should have used that to our advantage early doors, and shut everything down apart from cargo planes and ships.

* apart from Norn Irn, but the Irish border should have also been closed at the same time. It wasn't ,for reasons of political appeasement and I don't doubt that has cost lives.
There were deaths from the virus in ROI when there were none on the North, so the border could and should have been closed.