Dubai has Heathrow in its sights

more capacity could be found moving to larger aircraft.

It could, but for shorthaul flying the high-paying business traveller demands frequency otherwise there is no point in paying extra for flexible tickets. For shorthaul routes there is a fine balance of frequency vs aircraft size for airlines to get right.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining 😀
As a spotter I don’t mind if the new runway is delayed. At present you can tell with 95% certainty what runway an aircraft will land on. Add a third runway to the mix and things might not be so clean cut!

If you look at the last full year statistics – being 2011 – LHR handled 69.4m and DXB handled 50.9m. However, LHR had 479k movements and DXB reporting 331k movements. It is obvious that due to the large percentage of widebodies, more passengers are flown per flight. Both are two runway airports.

LHR is going to need a third runway, but more capacity could be found moving to larger aircraft.

To give rare credit to Gordon Brown during his time as PM, he had given the green light to R3. The bulldozers were practically rolling over the horizon… Then David came to power and pulled the plug on the upgrade

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Can’t argue with that…certainly an opportunity lost…and how long will it take to take a similar step forward.

I’m sure several airports will very soon have Heathrow in their sights if a UK government don’t grow a pair and give Heathrow another runway, and without years of enquiries and pandering to nimby’s

To give rare credit to Gordon Brown during his time as PM, he had given the green light to R3. The bulldozers were practically rolling over the horizon… Then David came to power and pulled the plug on the upgrade.

I’m sure several airports will very soon have Heathrow in their sights if a UK government don’t grow a pair and give Heathrow another runway, and without years of enquiries and pandering to nimby’s. Simple fact is that more high-yield pax want to fly from LHR than many other UK airports and all the pretty new terminals won’t mean a thing without more runway capacity.

Dubai Airport was very busy when I twice passed through there in July and August.
Despite that, the queues didn’t seem so bad. The whole place seemed quite well organised.
I was not so impressed with their airline, though.:mad:

And it is still growing and has the even bigger DWC next door!
Has anyone travelled through the airport recently?
I wondered what the queues were like…

The rate of growth has been phenomenal, in less than a decade they’ve surged past the global flight hubs of yesteryear.