Dublin Airport New Runway/Infrastructure.

Dardania

Interestingly, on UK Prime Ministers Questions today the topic of LRs third runway came up, and if they really should be spending money on it...

Fattes

Dardania wrote: »

Interestingly, on UK Prime Ministers Questions today the topic of LRs third runway came up, and if they really should be spending money on it...

Both Dublin and LHR need new runways currently and will do in the long term going forward.

Nice to see the new East apron coming along at Dublin too, anyone know when it will be active?

Tenger

Fattes wrote: »

Both Dublin and LHR need new runways currently and will do in the long term going forward.

I think we can agree that LHR has probably needed a new runway for at least 25 years, maybe more?

Irish Steve

Tenger wrote: »

I think we can agree that LHR has probably needed a new runway for at least 25 years, maybe more?

Given the number of old military runways that were closed, it would have made a lot more sense to have moved Heathrow to an alternative site that doesn't involve flying over Central London on a normal day. Greenham Common springs to mind as a site that would have been suitable, there are others, but the NIMBY factor means that most possible sites are deemed unacceptable.

25 years ago, another almost perfect site for a new major airport would have been Filton at Bristol, it had North/South and East/West motorway connections within a mile, and a railway line running through the site that is only just over an hour from London, ( and that's without ultra high speed trains) and at that time, there wasn't any significant urban developments that would have been affected by the runway profiles.

As for what happens going forward, that's likely to be very unclear and uncertain for some considerable time, today's pantomime in Brussels only served to confirm that there are a number of people at high levels in the EU who are totally out of touch with reality, so the BREXIT is going to be very messy, and very hostile, and that is likely to have an effect on the UK aviation scene, Ryanair have already said that new aircraft will be going to Europe going forward, and their UK operation will now not be expanded as they had planned.

In the same vein, the future for Dublin could become more complex, it will all depend on how the EU and the UK decide on the way that border controls will be managed on this island, and at the moment, it's very unclear what is likely to happen, given that the common travel area with the UK predates the EU accession, and if by some fluke Scotland (and even more unlikely Northern Ireland) manage to remain in the EU, that will make the whole border situation a nightmare.

I could also see IAG developing Dublin as a hub for European routes from the Atlantic, given the problems that could result from the UK border becoming more problematic.

What's very clear to me is that a number of issues are going to be very much uncertain for quite a while.

Fattes

Border issues will have zero effect on transit passengers. In fact they will have zero impact at all. The only airport that will struggle is probably Belfast, due to the nature of the CTA and it being seen as a weak entry point into the UK, London does not give a monkeys about NI.

The UK has actually been in a manufacturing recession for the past 3 quarters and Ryanair, IAG, and Virgin have all said they see their markets shrinking or stagnating over the next year or two, from the UK. How MOL suddenly decides to dress it up as because of Brexit is interesting.

Right now everyone is jockeying for deals position and favor with governments etc. you are very right about one thing the only certainty is uncertainty

Hotblack Desiato

Fattes wrote: »

The core point is the vast majority of DAA business is reliant on one destination the UK.

It's a big chunk but it's not half and not a 'vast majority'. Huge numbers of Irish in UK and vice versa means there will always be a lot of travel between the two and Ryanair require passports as it is.

Fattes

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

It's a big chunk but it's not half and not a 'vast majority'. Huge numbers of Irish in UK and vice versa means there will always be a lot of travel between the two and Ryanair require passports as it is.

Its 40% only two other destination account for anything close to double digit business. North America and Spain also. The UK accounts for 11.5 million passengers (39.6%) from all Irish airports in 2015, The next biggest are Spain 3.4 (12.7%) and N.America 2.8 (9.66%). Tell me again how it is not the vast majority of Irish Airport business? If 40% of your business market was a single customer you would be very wary of any change in it

All figures available below, I have rounded out the figures to the nearest 100,000 up for Spain down for US down for UK

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/as/aviationstatistics2015/

Irish Steve

The border control side of things at Dublin will be an issue at the moment, in that everyone has to come through the controls before you can get to another flight, there's no method at present to facilitate interlining, or transit passengers, and at the moment, nobody knows how the EU/UK border is going to be managed. To keep queues down to a reasonable length, the borders checks now are before baggage reclaim, but it's altogether possible that something similar to Istanbul may have to be put in, where all the checks for "landing" passengers are after baggage reclaim, which is a nightmare to get through, the queues there are up to an hour, depending on the time of day, but that would at least mean that transit passengers would not be affected, as they would remain airside. That also means that there will have to be 100% segregation between inbound and outbound passengers, I've not been in the old A pier in a long time, but it wasn't the case for a long time. If DAA are going to have to change the border control locations, that's going to be a massive upheaval and complex construction project, given the lack of space between baggage reclaim and landside.

Given how porous the actual border with NI is and has been historically, that is going to be a major discussion factor between the Irish and UK governments, and the EU, with some of the potential solutions being a flash point for local communities in the North, so it's far from decided or clear how this will be managed, given that EU citizens will be entitled to free movement in and out of the Republic, but may not (if some of the more vocal noises out of the UK are to be believed) be allowed to enter the UK. The Common Travel area predates the EU, and is important to both countries.

It is altogether possible that we may see the sorts of border that have been erected recently in parts of Eastern Europe to try and control immigration flows, and the thought of a "hard" border between Dundalk and Newry and along the entire border will have huge numbers of people possibly literally "up in arms", and the logistics of patrolling and managing it defy imagination, there are places where the actual border crosses some main roads half a dozen times in a very few miles, managing that with a hard border will be almost impossible.

What is clear is that the UK is in chaos at the moment as a result of this vote, they clearly didn't have a plan for exit, or anything close to it. The EU is also in panic, that was clear from the things seen on the TV broadcasts yesterday.

For sure, there will be a lot of discussions within the DAA, but until the relevant countries make some clear decisions, they can do nothing other than plan. The one good thing about it is that there will be a long exit timescale to this, so they should be able to get things in to place to deal with whatever is eventually decided.

goingnowhere

Don't see any issues really with Dublin, its already setup for a full hard border lockdown, everyone has to go through immigration.

So if the CTA dies, Dublin needs no investment at all and in fact no change in queues unless the policy becomes to deploy deeper checks on UK passports

Only risk area is the 200 gates where departing and arriving mix, but anyone who wishes to exit has to do so via passport control.

So you could make 200 IE domestic arrivals only and bus everyone else around to passport gate, so you could do Kerry - 200 - anywhere and thats fine, but not the opposite

Now if the CTA dies if Ireland joins Schengen (and lets face it we are not in Schengen because of the CTA) then we got a massive issue but you could do a Munich T1 deal and place the passport control ahead of the entry to security as there looks to be lot of room in T1 and T2

Would need to apply a LHR/LGW style biometrics to domestic

Hotblack Desiato

Fattes wrote: »

Its 40% only two other destination account for anything close to double digit business. North America and Spain also. The UK accounts for 11.5 million passengers (39.6%) from all Irish airports in 2015, The next biggest are Spain 3.4 (12.7%) and N.America 2.8 (9.66%). Tell me again how it is not the vast majority of Irish Airport business? If 40% of your business market was a single customer you would be very wary of any change in it

It's not a majority (51%) though and nowhere near a 'vast majority' (perhaps 80%?). You do have a point, but you are needlessly hyping it up with inaccurate language.

Irish Steve

The DAA have just been given more ammunition in their argument to make a start on the second runway, the UK government have yet again deferred the decision about additional runway capacity at Heathrow until the new leader has been elected.

One of the strong contenders for the leadership (Boris Johnson) is very anti Heathrow, which could put the whole process in doubt, and that scenario could accelerate the implied changes by IAG in favour of increasing the use of Dublin as a hub.

Fattes

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

It's not a majority (51%) though and nowhere near a 'vast majority' (perhaps 80%?). You do have a point, but you are needlessly hyping it up with inaccurate language.

25,000,000 million passengers through Dublin last year 10,000,000 to UK destinations, obviously any impact on the UK market is inconsequential to the DAA. :rolleyes:

As a market it account for 7 million passengers more than its nearest travel base for the DAA. A 5% down turn in the UK market accounts for 500,000.00 passengers the same in the Spanish accounts for 150,000, and Holland 45,000. But again a 5% downturn in the UK market would have no impact right :rolleyes:

Hotblack Desiato

Fattes wrote: »

25,000,000 million passengers through Dublin last year 10,000,000 to UK destinations, obviously any impact on the UK market is inconsequential to the DAA. :rolleyes:

Nobody has said that.

Fattes

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Nobody has said that.

People are saying that the UK is not the vast majority of DAA business, in reality it is and the planned and muted developments as Dublin as a HUB for IAG are all based on traffic from the UK. No other single market comes close to it. You would need 13 destinations from Dublin including Spain, Portugal, Poland, Holland, Italy Germany and France to make up the numbers the UK delivers currently.

Ben D Bus

On a related note, could Brexit herald the return of duty free shopping for UK routes?

Might this cushion the revenue fall from passenger charges and possibly even moderate falls in passenger numbers?

Fattes

Ben D Bus wrote: »

On a related note, could Brexit herald the return of duty free shopping for UK routes?

Might this cushion the revenue fall from passenger charges and possibly even moderate falls in passenger numbers?

Maybe, but the limits are quite small in terms of personal allowance etc If it was enforced anything like the Swiss model it will be nightmare.

https://www.gov.uk/duty-free-goods/arrivals-from-outside-the-eu

Cookiemunster

Fattes wrote: »

People are saying that the UK is not the vast majority of DAA business, in reality it is and the planned and muted developments as Dublin as a HUB for IAG are all based on traffic from the UK. No other single market comes close to it. You would need 13 destinations from Dublin including Spain, Portugal, Poland, Holland, Italy Germany and France to make up the numbers the UK delivers currently.

You obviously don't understand the concept of a vast majority. It may be the largest single segment, but it would need to be above 50% to be a majority and well above 50% to be a vast majority.

Fattes

Cookiemunster wrote: »

You obviously don't understand the concept of a vast majority. It may be the largest single segment, but it would need to be above 50% to be a majority and well above 50% to be a vast majority.

I understand fractions and percentages thanks. As single market it is 3.5 times bigger than the next biggest market (which is seasonal and limited) the UK as a market for the DAA it is equivalent to 13 destinations combined including the 2,4 & 5th biggest markets after it.

There is no market the DAA could replace it with, and there is no market for the daa with the same economics as it. It effects every DAA decision, every DAA planning development idea and every aspect of how the DAA and Irish airports in general operate. In a way no other market does.

But if you want to believe it is not driving the majority of the development decisions for the DAA that's up to you

Noxegon

This discussion, once interesting and informative, has descended into tedious and puerile pedantry.

L1011

Fattes wrote: »

I understand fractions and percentages thanks.

You don't. Something under 50% is never a majority. Plurality, maybe.

Irish Steve

Noxegon wrote: »

This discussion, once interesting and informative, has descended into tedious and puerile pedantry.

Agreed. A gentle hint was posted a while ago by one of my colleagues, and it is being ignored. I am approaching my threshold of irritability with the inability of certain people to take on board a moderation suggestion.

If that suggestion continues to be ignored, there will be consequences.

AndyBoBandy

Does anyone know roughly when the renovations of the T1 arrivals hall will be complete?

Was up there last week and it seems they are really cracking on with it all!

dazed+confused

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Does anyone know roughly when the renovations of the T1 arrivals hall will be complete?

Was up there last week and it seems they are really cracking on with it all!

I was in the Arrivals Hall during the week. It looks a little untidy at the minute, it's a shame for such an iconic building, hopefully it wont be long.

Pat Dunne

Was in T1 arrivals a couple of times over the last forthnight. Accessing Departures is a bit of a pain with the left side escalators out of commission and behind hoardings, the lifts are fine to use and generally empty as very few people are aware they are there.

Exiting from Baggage Hall/Customs into T1 Arrivals and on to carparks is currently fine.

I have alway found the Arrivals Hall to be a functional space which lacks natural lighting, the average ceiling height does nothing to enhance the space either. To my mind the original designer got it perfectly right, in making it a space that people will want to spend the bear minimum amount of time in.

medoc

The sooner the new runway is built the better. Took us 25 minutes to take off this morning after we pushed back. The DAA website had us as departed on time. The queue of departing planes behind us was long too.

JCX BXC

medoc wrote: »

The sooner the new runway is built the better. Took us 25 minutes to take off this morning after we pushed back. The DAA website had us as departed on time. The queue of departing planes behind us was long too.

Took us 30mins on Monday morning.

LoonyLovegood

What time is the worst for the departures in the morning? If I'm flying early, it's usually the 6.20 to Manchester so we tend to take off fairly quickly because it's one of the first.

Jamie2k9

medoc wrote: »

The sooner the new runway is built the better. Took us 25 minutes to take off this morning after we pushed back. The DAA website had us as departed on time. The queue of departing planes behind us was long too.

Airlines/Airports count departures as the time you push back/arrive on stand.

jamo2oo9

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Airlines/Airports count departures as the time you push back/arrive on stand.

Not for Ryanair though? They close gates typically 30mins before departure. At least that was the case for me before.

Jamie2k9

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

Not for Ryanair though? They close gates typically 30mins before departure. At least that was the case for me before.

Not sure how they calculate their published stats but the flight time is from push back/arrival on stand so if a flight to Manchester is due to depart at 06.30 and arrive at 07.35 the clock starts ticking once push back starts. It;s not runway departure to runway arrival.