| Flying
From Heathrow Is Not Necessarily Quicker – A Personal Viewpoint
By
Philip
Suter Over
the past year I travelled via London Luton and London Heathrow on
several occasions. I
have found that the service from London Heathrow to Dublin very reliable – no
delays and arriving on time. The only occasion there was a delay was on the evening
of Thursday July 7th 2005 – Understandable. People
generally think that the budget airlines will be more delayed than other airlines
flying from a major airport like Heathrow. My experience this year of flying to
Nice from London Heathrow has proved otherwise. In
March I took a very early flight to Nice. We say on the tarmac for nearly three
quarters of an hour in the early morning, before starting the “joy ride” around
Heathrow joining a large queue of planes wanting to take off. The plane taxied
past the new Terminal 5 (How on earth they will cope with the extra passengers
in the airspace when it opens – you will probably circle around London for an
hour!) and eventually we were airborne. The
plane had a good tailwind, but it still arrived over three quarters of an hour
late. Why? Are there too many planes coming in and out ? Maybe it is only on certain
routes. In
May I took the Friday evening flight from Heathrow. Cannes film festival was well
underway and the fifth Historic Monaco Grand Prix was on that weekend. On arrival
at Terminal 1 check in, my wife and I were offered a trade in for our tickets.
They had sold more tickets than they had seats for and were asking each passenger
if they would prefer to stay in a hotel overnight in the Heathrow area and fly
on the Saturday morning. We
were not interested. We checked in and went through the controls to the “shopping
centre” to await the notification of which gate to proceed to. It was getting
nearer and nearer to departure time and still no notification. I went to the British
Airways help desk and was told the flight gate would be announced any minute.
It was about a minute later, about seven minutes before it was due to take off. Fortunately
the departure gate was one of the closer ones to the terminal – about five minutes
walk. It was several more minutes before we actually boarded and the rest of the
100 per cent full plane. By this time it was about twenty minutes after the time
it should have taken off. The cabin crew representative apologised for the delay
that had been down to “extra cleaning”. We lost our take off slot and
nearly an hour later than we should have taken off, actually got airborne. We
should have arrived in Nice just before 11.30 pm local time with sufficient time
to get to Terminal 2 to collect the rental car. Although the plane made up time,
it was still after midnight when we landed at Terminal one. The car rental company
had a sign up saying go to their depot at Terminal two. We decided to check to
see if they were still open and they, plus some of their competitors were still
there as they officially closed at midnight. There
were also other people there collecting carsand I thanked the receptionist for
staying on. She told me this happened every night. I received in the post
a few days after my return home a bill for 39 euros for out of hours attendance. I
wrote to the airline saying that as the plane was delayed as they had to undertake
“extra cleaning” and that as they would have been more than happy to pay for two
people’s hotel accommodation as they had overbooked the flight that a reimbursement
of the 39 euros would be welcome. I
heard nothing for a couple of weeks, so sent a follow up. They replied back from
the original letter saying that they could not reimburse “taxi expenses”
and that they hoped I would fly again with them soon. I replied to them, suggesting
that my letter had not even been read correctly and yes, I was going to
Nice again in July, but this time had booked with a competitor. I
received a very polite but brief letter from the Customer Relations person saying
that they certainly could not compensate us. It would have been interesting to
know what costs they would have had to pay to accommodate us in a hotel with food
etc as they offered on that May Friday evening. In
July we went to Nice via London, Luton. Yes the plane was late coming in from
Geneva, but as soon as it was emptied and refuelled etc we were on our way. There
was a small queue with aircraft waiting to take off, but generally it was a lot,
lot better. Luton is getting busier, but usage over the last year have included,
Amsterdam, Dublin and Barcelona and the delays have not been like those at London
Heathrow. What is more the on-site long term car parking is a lot cheaper than
at Heathrow. The
plans for Heathrow are to make it even larger. Although there is a lot of local
opposition, the villages of Sipson and Harmondsworth will probably disappear in
the next few years and become the third runway plus Terminals 6,7 plus. That airspace
is going to be exceptionally crowded and it will probably take the same time to
fly from most European destinations to the Heathrow area as now, however it will
then probably mean the plane is stacking and circling for more than hour to actually
land! Philip
Suter is a Director of jml Property Services; http://www.jmlproperty.co.uk
a UK based company offering Insurance products on line at http://www.jml-property-insurance.co.uk
and a holiday home advertising service http://www.jmlvillas.com
and management training within the UK. He a travel writer and is a
very experienced property consultant with over 30 years work in the Residential
letting business in the UK and served on the National Council of ARLA. He is a
Fellow of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and a Member of The
association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) ©Philip
Suter jml Property Services July 2006
___________________________
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