[Anonymous]

[continentalclub]

From today, and on a trial basis, British Airways are meeting non-airbridge linked Helsinki and Vienna arrivals at T3 with separate buses for Club Europe and Euro Traveller passengers.

Club Europe buses will depart for the terminal building first, and will carry a maximum of 32 passengers.

T5C comes on stream very soon, which is forecast to reduce bussing to under 5% of T5 movements, so presumably some of the vehicles released can be/are being redeployed elsewhere to improve service levels.

[StephenLondon]

Thank goodness! The transfers have been painful, especially when in premium cabins. I returned from Scandinavia recently, we parked near T5C, and were packed into a hot bus, winding our way to the terminal. It added a good extra 15 minutes onto the arrival experience, after a long day, and a perfectly pleasant flight (where even the food was passable) with great service from lovely crew. The bus killed off the good service I’d had from everyone up until that point.

[conair346]

Sounds good, how long it lasts is another thing. I’m pleased that LHR has contract or inhouse bussing.

MAN has no such luck, managed by the airport directly and god help the airline representative who has the gall to not pack on 60 pax per coach as they are designed for. I’ve tried packing TOM and BA pax onto the coaches, dont think I’ve ever got near 60 before theres an evident squeeze. If you have an A320 with 180 pax, you’re given 3 coaches (3×60=180). Doesnt quite work with cabin baggage and fat pax in the mix.

[DiamondDad68]

About time too. I took the early flight to CDG last week. We made our way over to T5B only to be put on busses and driven off somewhere else remote to board. Needless to say there were a lot of very grumpy PAX at seven am in the morning

[MontanaKen]

The bussing activity at European airports has always been a matter of curiosity and amusement to me. Why? It never happens in the States, and so often in Europe I am herded onto a bus, and enroute to the aircraft, I see countless unused airbridge-connected gates. I lump the Euro-bussing mind set into the same category as Euro-hotels not providing a simple shower curtain to keep water off the bathroom floor. Especially laughable is that half length glass panel which looks good and provides next to no floor protection. It would be a giant step into the current century if the airport busses disappeared completely and the shower curtains appeared universally!

[VintageKrug]

Not really either curious or amusing.

Simply put, many Euro airports have grown from military airfields on space-constrained sites into the international hubs we see today. Accordingly, it has been less easy to create the terminal/jetty space needed for jetways; this is one of the reasons T5 has so many escalators as it had to be stacked vertically in order to accommodate the square footage between the two runways.

[Binman62]

It also has some of the longest airbridges in the world and will still bus when fully operational because it was done on the cheap. Add to this the refusal of many to accept the inconvenient truth that it is in the wrong place and needs bulldozing and rebuilt a long long way away. As a result you have the an airport that cannot handle some rain as evidenced by the numerous cancellation BA have taken tonight at T5 as a result of rain in the south east of england for this first time in weeks and described on BA.com and bad weather. It is raining.

[greyhawkgeoff]

Binman62 -you are off the subject of tis post – raining it may have been, but at 1710 I saw an Iberia 32o do a go around on missing runway 27L during a violent thunderstorm, with strong gusts of wind that caused road accidents and motor cyclist to get blown off. It is no wonder that an over capacity schedule at LHR led to cancellations and delays, the infrastructure cannot take 40+ flights in and 40+ out per hour in the torrential rain with wind sheer. Traffic on the roads was reduced to a crawl, and I dare say landing was a test of piloting, so a number of cancellations and delays was at best unavoidable. Choose a better target for your attack next time.

[MontanaKen]

Nearly all airports started out small, regardless of their original purpose, military or not. I use LHR, FRA, and CDG most of the time. Each uses busses to transport passengers to distant, and not-so distant airplanes, followed by a 1930’s style climb up the stairs to the plane. LHR’s design, completed in 1946, had no parking space incorporated – ideal for the time, not so much now as parking takes immense space. FRA and CDG are huge, as FRA was a huge startup military airport. They are still expanding, and still can’t get the bus out of their designs. CDG was developed, exclusively, as a civil airport and is huge, covering more than 12 square miles. All modern and all fairly recent. Busses everywhere. For space constraints you just cannot find more constraint than at EWR or DCA, for example. No busses, no climbing stairs, at either. The situation may begin with space constraints in some cases, but it goes beyond that.

[maxgeorge]

Well spoken, Ken.

Having just slugged up and down those confusing escalators to the lounge, and thereafter been jammed into a non a/c bus from T5 Gate A10 out to BA282, I can only assume that LHR was designed by some latter-day Heath Robinson.

Buses! Steps up to the aircraft! Those bizarre protuberances, C2 & C3! Not to mention the circuitous, burrowing bus ride from T4 to T1 that used to take almost as long as my Railair connection from the airport to Reading.

Compare that to the slick new operation at MVD – and that’s Uruguay, for God’s sake, hardly a centre of world trade..

Space restrictions? SNA ( Orange County, California ) was recently rebuilt, on it’s original narrow single runway Army Air Corps site, hemmed in by wealthy and litigious neighbours watching for the slightest encroachment into their environment, to accomodate a 400% increase in traffic since the ’70’s.

Number of gates tripled, a thirty second walk from the building to the aircraft door, not a bus in sight, and the whole operation smoother than the top of Hague’s head.

And flights routinely on time, despite heavy GA traffic and severe FAA flight path and altitude restrictions on all Part 125 ( commercial ) operations.

‘course, they never have to plan for snowfall. Just like Heathrow. And if you did need to be bussed airside, I garantor ya’ the bus would have seats, a/c, and a no-standing policy.

As for UK B&B showers, all you need is the two page instruction manual and a stiff upper lip.

[BAGoldcard]

I returned from HEL on Sunday and was met by a bus that was used solely for the 12 or so Club Europe passengers. The purser was careful to make sure that once we had dismbarked, the Euro Traveller passengers were held at the top of the stairs and off we went.

A great service, which is provided by Middle Eastern airlines, so good to see BA looking to improve the service for its premium passengers.

[conair346]

Busing at Euro airports is also born of a security nature. No matter how far your plane is from the terminal, if it’s not accessed directly by a door in the terminal you *should* be bused.

I know FR bend the rules, some airports have ‘secure’ passenger walkways outside. However LHR, FRA, MUC, CDG are huge and it’s not feasible to try and accommodate loose passengers on the tarmac, especially if there’s the chance that 1 in 10,000 has ulterior motives.

US airports my be space constrained yet have all airbridges. That’s how they do it. We don’t waste space building more terminal to get lost in so you don’t have to haul your big rollaboard up the steps. New airports may be designed with excess capacity in mind hence no need for busing, yet.

[RichHI1]

In the US they use multiple gates with walkways for regional jets which have very few steps. I think the BA approach at T3 and T5 stems from saving money by BA and BAA and lack of respect for the needs of passengers (having knee problems flying BA to Spain or Portugal is a nightmare for me) rather than security.

[conair346]

Of course the airlines don’t respect PRM’s, they don’t lay on teams of people to push people in wheelchairs around, lead blind people onboard or assist deaf people. They don’t provide ambulifts to use on remote gates so these PRM’s don’t have to endure steps if the aircraft is remote.

Also where do you suggest BAA stick the terminal facilities needed to accommodate more airbridges? Put more tunnels under the tarmac, or close whole taxiways further restricting flows around LHR? If they did it on the cheap why not put in steps rather than being decadent with the escalators. Those PRM’s, screw them let’s take out a few elevators too to save a few pounds yeah?

How many regional aircraft serve LHR? BA don’t use any, BD only have a few and would mean restricting options on stands for only RJ’s which is compounding the space issue. And BAA increasing charges for domestic and short/euro flights so I doubt there will be many more RJ’s around with other airlines either.

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