They’re going to replicate Emirates’ hub and spoke netwrok, linking east and west, so yes Europe will do well out of it, particularly the more regional airports.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=44152

OMG, nonsense!

I think to know ‘who’, if anyone is the British Flag Carrier you have to look at the meaning of this, historically that is. Flag carrier status came about because of bilateral agreements, and typically only one airline from each country could fly a given route, and therefore the airline was the designated flag carrier for the route. In the 1980s the UK had joint flag carriers, based on regions of the world, British Airways was the designated flag carrier to most destinations, but British Caledonian was the designated flag carrier to South America and West Africa. Certain markets featured both airlines though, although BA took flag carrier status on these destinations and regions, so for example the USA and Asia.

Officially it would be sensible to say that British Airways would be counted as the British Flag Carrier, but in actual fact VS has been the flag carrier to some destinations when only one designated carrier was permitted on a route, i.e. Shanghai. However there are no routes which VS fly that BA don’t. There are still many routes though that are assigned to only a single carrier from the UK, and as BA has these then by default it should be considered the flag carrier.

The basis of the flag carrier status was that it preserved the market status for national airlines (at a time when economic development, and the size of the air transport market dicated that it would be unwise to allow excessive competition). In reality the UK doesn’t really have a single flag carrier in the way we used to see, although my understanding is that BA does carry this status overall, as a result of its network. VS used the slogan when BA chose to drop the union flag from their tail, it was purely a marketing stunt, as is often the case with VS based on the fact that they felt BA had dropped their cultural heritage.

The US ended flag carrier status following deregulation, although this didn’t stop them assiging carriers to markets where there were restrictions, so for example, access to LHR was restricted and only certain airlines could therefore be permitted onto the market. The general preference of the US government would be full open skies agreements with every nation in the world, and then they would not have to assigne markets to individual airlines, but would allow the airlines themselves to be truly competitive, which is ironic really, given that they prop up their industry..making it almost anti-competitive…but thats another topic ;).

Any help..?

If you’re talking about the major developments taking place then I think you need to focus on the main issues at Stansted. The proposals at STN are a ridiculous cost, and many of the plans in their G1 and G2 masterplans are elaborate beyond the necessary. The BAA seem to have forgotten who their main clients are at these airports, and shoudl have consulted them better as to how they could develop the airport going forward. The LCCs are happy not to have airbridges and other elaborate infrastructure for example, it just adds silly cost to the overall schemes. Additionally there are even question marks over the NEED for a new runway at STN!!

Hmm… I’m not entirely convinced of that!

Anyway, those engines are for girls. This is a very poor photo snapped through the window at LHR early last year (incidentally just as I was about to board a BA 747 with nice big RB-211’s), but it serves well to illustrate how the Trent 800 is definately NOT a girls engine.

Paul

The engine cowlings on the 777 are the same diameter as the fuselage of a Boeing-737!!! That applies to all the engines, but of course the Trent is one of them!

I suppose they would qualify as smaller hubs – my main interest is in the times – does anybody know when the bulk of long-haul flights take-off from the above hubs?

There are some fairly simple rules for hub departures for long haul routes. Asia is the most difficult so I will come back to this.

Typically from Europe, US flights depart from mid/late morning to mid/late afternoon, typically you should consider 11am-3pm GMT, so apply that across the hubs. These aircraft typically arrive around 2-3 hours later (local time obviously) and so can then depart from the US in the early to late evening, think typically 5pm – 10pm local time, to arrive back in Europe between very early (5-6am) and mid morning (11pm). There are a few exceptions to this, such as a United and BA flight from LHR to JFK that depart at about 8am and arrive back in late that night at about 10pm (from memory). Other exceptions include some flights to/from the West Coast which will depart late morning, but arrive back in mid/late afternoon.

The middle east is fairly evenly spread throughout the day for arrivals and departures.

So that leaves the Far East and Indian sub-continent. TYPICALLY many Asian flights arrive early-late afternoon and depart mid-late at night from Europe. HOWEVER there are a number of routes which have very early morning arrivals into Europe (perhaps 5-6am GMT) and then depart by lunchtime to early afternoon. In many cases an airline would often put on services leaving in the evening. BUT when they put a second service on they spread it to have a lunchtime sort of departure. These routes tend to be more spread than many US services.

I would say you have clearly identified the ‘major’ hubs in Europe, there are some others which are of interest. SWISS still hub a lot of traffic from other countries through ZRH. Another interesting hub is Helsinki (Finnair), which offers the shortest flying times to Asia. Don’t forget also that for many Asian/Australasian destinations passengers are using regional airports with connections in the middle east.

You don’t have to search the electronic timetables for the airlines, you can often download the actual timetables in pdf format…follow this…

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/mobilett/public/en_gb and choose the pc option,

http://www.klm.com/travel/travel_en/travel_information/travel_planning/timetable/index.htm

For Air France, go to their UK website, then click on timetable then at the bottom select the Download schedules option.

I think Lufthansa have a similar downloadable timetable, but haven’t checked. Hope this helps a bit.