Airport.

[StCatherine]

On a tangent, I see Jez Spake has a case against the DOI in the small claims court for Debt recovery. Up on 10th November. 

[asitis]

55 minutes ago, Stu Peters said:

If we still had plenty of money we'd possibly contract an operator to service all our key routes.

Stu you have summed up our woes in many sectors in this one sentence ! We don't have money because of grossly negligent uses of public money, by previous and this administration. Facing facts, Government have been profligate with public money for years, and the train is now nearing the buffers. We still however seem to be dick waving with leading the world in climate change measures, and we have a tin shed in Liverpool the incompetence surrounding it and it's draining of public money beggars belief ! We are an island drowning in civil servants and petty bureaucracy and fast running out of money.

[asitis]

3 minutes ago, StCatherine said:

On a tangent, I see Jez Spake has a case against the DOI in the small claims court for Debt recovery. Up on 10th November. 

How much does the twit owe us ?

[Roger Mexico]

3 hours ago, madmanxpilot said:

There never were ATC issues at LGW the other night. Everyone else managed just fine. 

Edited to say that again, tonight, it only seems to be EZY who are affected - 30+ flights scrubbed, whilst the departures board shows only a couple of other cancellations for BA. Maybe other flights will been scrubbed later, but until they do, I remain suspicious.

But one of the main reasons that there's only really two airlines at Gatwick.  We think of it as London's second airport and assume from that there is a wide range of operators to a wide range of destinations.  But if you look at the July punctuality figures, they tell a different story:

Gatwick	Flts Schd	Canx	% Canx	% of Flts
easyJet	11920	432	3.6%	44.6%
BA/Euroflyer	11472	177	1.5%	42.9%
TUI	1723	6	0.3%	6.5%
Wizz	648	40	6.2%	2.4%
Aurigny	372	10	2.7%	1.4%
Others	578	51	8.8%	2.2%
Total	26713	716	2.7%	100.0%

easyJet flights are more likely to cancelled because there are more of them.  Analysis (including of data reliability) follows

[madmanxpilot]

6 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

But one of the main reasons that there's only really two airlines at Gatwick.  We think of it as London's second airport and assume from that there is a wide range of operators to a wide range of destinations.  But if you look at the July punctuality figures, they tell a different story:

Gatwick	Flts Schd	Canx	% Canx	% of Flts
easyJet	11920	432	3.6%	44.6%
BA/Euroflyer	11472	177	1.5%	42.9%
TUI	1723	6	0.3%	6.5%
Wizz	648	40	6.2%	2.4%
Aurigny	372	10	2.7%	1.4%
Others	578	51	8.8%	2.2%
Total	26713	716	2.7%	100.0%

easyJet flights are more likely to cancelled because there are more of them.  Analysis (including of data reliability) follows

Of course, all things being equal, that is an obvious fact. However, do take a look at this evenings departure board which I’ve linked below and see if that proportionality stacks up. I can see 131 scheduled departures between 1700 and close of play today. There are 31 cancellations, all of them EZY.

LGW departures

 

[John Wright]

Just now, madmanxpilot said:

Of course, all things being equal, that is an obvious fact. However, do take a look at this evenings departure board which I’ve linked below and see if that proportionality stacks up. I can see 131 scheduled departures between 1700 and close of play today. There are 31 cancellations, all of them EZY.

LGW departures

 

And EZY are blaming Gatwick ATC

[newaccount]

Such are the staffing shortages in ATC at Gatwick that it only requires one person going off ill to cause major problems 

[madmanxpilot]

1 minute ago, newaccount said:

Such are the staffing shortages in ATC at Gatwick that it only requires one person going off ill to cause major problems 

It’s the same here. 

[John Wright]

5 minutes ago, newaccount said:

Such are the staffing shortages in ATC at Gatwick that it only requires one person going off ill to cause major problems 

 

2 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said:

It’s the same here. 

However, presumably, LGW ATC aren’t singling out EZY…

[Roger Mexico]

As usual some random points:

• This Summer saw the introduction of BA Euroflyer, supposed to be BA's short-haul Gatwick subsidiary.  Despite having the second largest number of flights (10,148), it's not showing a single cancellation.  These seem to be hidden under other airlines such as BA whose flights may now being operated by Euroflyer (which apparently include such short-haul destinations as Vietnam).  I've incorporated BA in the above figures, but there may be other related airlines such as Vueling who are affected as well, which would up the canx percentage.  So there's a mess there.
• Flights include chartered as well as scheduled.  The domination of Gatwick by easyJet and BA is pretty clear  and it will be even stronger in Winter with fewer short-haul charters.  The fact that tiny Aurigny is #5 in number of movements (obviously it will be less for pax) show that this is a two-horse town.
• easyJet are definitely doing worse than BA in terms of cancellations, though 3.6% isn't mega-dreadful and the Others may hide some BA cancellations as I said. 
• But it's pretty bad for their Isle of Man route though, whose cancellation percentage as discussed before was 15%.  If you ignore the odd one-off charter and Catania Airport which had the excuse it went on fire half way through the month and didn't reopen till August, only Paris CdG was just worse for easyJet (17%) and no other domestic destination had more than 5%.  So while there are wider industry problems, the IOM is being hit worst than most.
• But it's also clear that people are still willing to take a punt on those evening flights, despite the unreliability being well-known.

[Two-lane]

1 hour ago, Stu Peters said:

If we still had plenty of money

Do you think that the Cabinet Office could get by without a Chief Operating Officer?

 

[Andy Onchan]

3 minutes ago, Two-lane said:

Do you think that the Cabinet Office could get by without a Chief Operating Officer?

 

And all those Policy Directors?

[Non-Believer]

22 minutes ago, Two-lane said:

Do you think that the Cabinet Office could get by without a Chief Operating Officer?

 

Or even without a Cabinet Office, full stop. Just like we used to.

[Roger Mexico]

39 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said:

Of course, all things being equal, that is an obvious fact. However, do take a look at this evenings departure board which I’ve linked below and see if that proportionality stacks up. I can see 131 scheduled departures between 1700 and close of play today. There are 31 cancellations, all of them EZY.

LGW departures

Yes, though it's always dangerous to judge things on a single day of course.  Is it also a time-of-day thing as well, with flights scheduled for early evening being hardest hit?

The link for my table was actually to the pdf for June not July, but the analysis was from the spreadsheet for July.  But looking at the June figures, it's quite clear that the July ones are corrupted in some way to do with BA and all sorts of flights have been allocated to it from other airlines, including unrelated.  Though I suspect to easyJet figures are correct.

[newaccount]

Gatwick airport has imposed a temporary cap on flight movements with immediate effect until 1 October due to ATC staff shortages.

 

Flight movements will be limited to 800 a day. These were the planned movements for this week:

 

Tuesday - 800 movements  

Wednesday – 829 movements 

Thursday – 840 movements 

Friday – 865 movements 

Saturday – 800 movements  

Sunday – 830 movements

 

30% of NATS tower staff are currently unavailable for a variety of medical reasons including covid

Edited September 25, 2023 by newaccount