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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0059.PDF
iMumMnr INTERNATIONAL Week ending 14 January 1989 Number 4147, Volume 135 ISSN 0015-3710 IN THIS ISSUE Tupolev 204 makes first flight 2 BMA 737's "engines failed" Libyan MiGs were armed 3 USA sets TCAS deadline 4 Braniff A320 order boosts V2500 5 Eurofighter outlines proposal to Belgium 6 P&W/Allison propfan flight due 7 Antonov's Dream realised 8 Confusion surrounds A-10 replacement 9 New Year aviation honours 10 USA approves BA/American deal 11 Fairer sport initiative launched 2 Phobos 2 in trouble 13 Norway develops SAM 4 Instructor blamed for crash 15 NATO releases statistics 6 Australia's F-lll update debate 18 The Royal Australian Air Force needs to introduce new technology into its F-lll fleet. Mike Gaines reports from RAAF Amberley. The hungry god 22 David Learmount looks at the problems facing the airport infrastructure as capacity limits are approached. Moving out 28 The growth of regional airports to meet the new demands expected' to be created by the European Central Flow Management System is examined by Emma Stynes, Gilbert Sedbon, and John Bailey. Breakfast in London 34 New computer systems promise to streamline airport baggage handling. Lee Paddon investigates. Letters 37 Straight and Level 38 NEXT WEEK Chris Drewer describes the work of the Icelandic Cofisi Guard, whose duties: range from ice patrol to search and rescue. Front cover: Royal Australian Air Force F-llls need an update to take them into the next century. Mike Gaines looks at the alternatives on pages 18-21. OUR VIEW. Wrong assumptions? There is a natural tendency in some quarters to see the development of regional airports as a complete solution to the perceived overcrowding of major hubs. Such thinking depends on the unchallenged validity of some fairly major assumptions. It assumes that there is, indeed, over crowding at the major hubs in the first place. Certainly, there is no capacity left at some international airports for flight slots at the times at which most airlines think their customers want to fly. Certainly, environmental pressures restrict operating hours so that there can be few places anywhere in the world where a runway's hourly capacity can be sustained for 24 hours a day. It assumes that there is a direct equiv alence between one long, fat route between major hubs and a series of long, thin routes between regional centres. This can be the case, but, even were it to hold true, there would always be the demand for the existing services between those hubs. Assuming that the regional services attract some of the major hub traffic, those major services will presumably be turned into long, thin services themselves, but bearing all the high costs of using the major hubs so as to make them less economic. It assumes that a regional airport carrying relatively small amounts of traf fic can justify the expenditure on sophis ticated passenger and baggage handling systems and security equipment which increasingly will be demanded by regu latory authorities and customers. A further assumption is that govern ments will happily provide ever- increasing immigration control and customs resources at regional airports in a world where governments seem to be trying to reduce their expenditures on such things. It assumes that passenger demands will, in general, be satisfied by direct inter-city flights: for those whose ulti mate destinations are neither the major hubs nor the major regional airports, interlining is likely to remain more possible from a major hub. It assumes that regional airports are more easily expanded and upgraded than are the existing major hubs. In some cases that is true; in others it patently is not. Regional airports tend to be sited closer to the cities they serve than do many of the more modern major international airports, and are therefore just as likely as them, if not more likely, to come up against environmental restrictions as they try to expand. Against all those negatives, both the airport operators and the aircraft manu facturers seem convinced that there will be a dramatic growth in regional airport capacity and usage in the next few years. The manufacturers, in particular, are offering more regional airliners than they have for many years, and their sales forecasts certainly assume a massive upswing worldwide in regional traffic. Much of that expansion will, it is assumed, be triggered by deregulation, especially in the hitherto-strangled European market. Given those forecasts, there are very good grounds for improving regional airports to handle more effectively the traffic which naturally goes to them. To try to move traffic to them on artificial grounds, however, is a move which, in general, will be doomed to failure: if people do not want to fly from a regional airport, they will not. More importantly than that, spending money on developing regional airports is not, and should not be seen as, a cheap alternative to solving the existing prob lems, of the major hubs. The problems of peak-time crowding both in the air and on the ground, of security, of environ mental objection, of land transport links all remain and will remain. To assume otherwise is to misunderstand air trans port and its growth. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 14 January 1989 1
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