Not talking about the tunnel itself – the high speed rail link to St. Pancras was on time and within budget.

I think Adonis has been reading would-be aviation minister Skymonster’s proposals on this very forum during the LHR 3rd runway debate! 😀

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=87426&highlight=heathrow+runway

OK, so here’s what Aviation Minister Skymonster would do:

1. Set in place a process to build a high-speed rail network from London via a multi-modal hub near Heathrow, with tracks then going towards Birmingham/West Midlands and on to Manchester and Glasgow, and towards Leeds (via the East Midlands) and Edinburgh. OK, this would take some time to build, so we may need to accept constraints at LHR for the time being – albeit that the current recession might actually help the immediacy at LHR

2. When (1) is complete, ban ALL domestic air traffic from the catchment areas of the high-speed rail network – i.e. no more MAN-LHR, GLA-LHR, EDI-LHR, LBA-LHR, MME-LHR etc. And place similar restrictions on donestic traffic LGW and STN too, to ensure that the traffic doesn’t just migrate to another airport over time

3. Not allow the freed up runway capacity created by 2 to be re-used for new sevices or frequency increases… thereby reducing or illiminating airborne holding delays at Bovingdon, Ockham and the like, and thus the polution created by the current airport capacity’s inabiluty to cope

did you enjoy flying backwards on UA958 ?

Huh? Were you on the flight – you should have said hello if so.

But yes, it was fine, particularly after a couple of gin and tonics! 😀

Andy

“Am I being absolutely ridiculous?”

What’s the point in asking now? :confused: By your own admission, you’ve booked the flights and you’re not going on the A330.

What I do find ridiculous is that you claim you have concerns over “the possible oversights at AF which may or may not have played a part” and yet you’re still flying on AF, albeit not on an A330. If you were really concerned, you’d have flown on a different airline.

Andy

PS: If Ryanair ever have a serious fatal on their 737-800s, you’re going to have a serious problem getting around Europe! 😉

So why not just add the £1 flat onto each fare, and forget about it? Well because, rightly or wrongly (there are definate arguments both ways) we have been spoilt by low fares and so the travelling public has become highly price sensitive, to such an extent that traditional price-elasticity ratios associated with air fares increases don’t necessarily apply anymore. Much of the travel on th LCC’s is discretionary, particulalry driven by the question “where can I get to at the lowest ticket price?” Every small step up in ticket price cuts another layer of potential demand out…

Hurrah, and good of you to acknowledge it – at least here we can clearly see why Ryanair has to a large extent only itself to blame for its current conundrum at Stansted (and maybe elsewhere too). Clearly recession reduces discretionary spend, but over the last few years Ryanair has lead the discretionary market to expect £1-type fares, and in these economically sensitive times more would-be travellers are either (a) unwilling to pay more for travel that is indeed discretionary – particularly for Ryanair’s style of service – or (b) delaying buying when they see a higher fare and instead are wait for the next £1-type fare offer even if that ends up involving travel to a different destination. It is not totally correct to believe that most travellers buying decisions will be changed by a £1 increase in overall fare – it is rather more correct to believe that the market has been conditioned to pay next to nothing and in these difficult times wishes to preserve that ability and will put off or abandon the idea of travel when they such fares are not available. In any case, even if the assertion that market will not stand a £1 increase in total fare is partially correct, it is even more appropriate to realise that it will not stand further increases in credit/debit card fees, check-in fees, baggage fees, priority boarding fees, etc – all of which Ryanair have increased by far more than the increase in APD. That leaves Ryanair with the option of either absorbing the APD increase (and on promotional fares not collect so many ancilliary fees either) and suffering from reduced yields and maybe even loadfactors too, or moving capacity out of UK (to EUR land, where travel is less affected by currency fluctuations and punative taxes). Ryanair may have gotten away with what they’ve done, had it not been for the APD increase being compounded by the recession reducing the demand for discretionary travel and the currency fluctuations making UK-Europe travel less economically viable – even if the fare is close to zero, most UK-originating travellers still spend whilst they’re abroad so the total cost of the trip increases)

The contention that APD increases are/will affect other airlines too is quite true, although because Ryanair have chosen to live at the sharp end of the low-fares offerings they are thus more impacted than many of the other short haul airlines if they chose to absorb these increases – as they have to do if they continue to offer £1 fares. Thus Ryanair have to a significant extent created a problem of their own making – the mantra of extremely cheap or “free” flights has directed market expectation and indirectly driven their own yields down. A bit of an own goal, in effect.

Andy

I have been back on the phone this afternoon, and Mark – they told me the same thing, that the are “loads” of empty seats on the PHL-LHR flight.

So have they rebooked you for the original date then, or not? BTW, LHR and LGW are co-terminals, so US Airways won’t pay for your travel from LHR to LGW if you end up flying into LHR.

Anyways, this is the document you need:

http://www.usairways.com/common/resources/_downloads/aboutus/US_contract_of_carriage.pdf

I put forward the option of maybe flying back into another UK airport with them and perhaps doing a connecting flight with a partner airline, or even using UA instead… “No we don’t do that unless we cannot operate the flight on the day and we will then find an alternate routing for you” was the answer I got on that front.

Page 18 of the document – actually page 22 of the PDF:

9.0 DELAYED AND CANCELLED FLIGHTS

9.4 REBOOKING
When a ticketed customer holding confirmed reservations on a flight will be delayed because of a schedule irregularity (whether a missed connection, flight cancellation, omission of a scheduled stop, substitution of equipment or a different class of service, or schedule change), US Airways will rebook
the customer on its next available flight to the customer’s ticketed destination without additional charge. If US Airways is unable to provide onward transportation, US Airways may attempt to rebook the customer on the next available flight of another airline with which US Airways has an agreement allowing the acceptance of each other’s tickets.

You need to start pushing the position that they have cancelled the flight (they may argue that its a schedule change, not a cancellation, but that’s covered too), and that their terms and conditions state that when a flight is cancelled they will rebook you on the next available flight (note, it doesn’t say anything about that flight needing to have availability in a specific booking class) – which seems to be to LHR the same day, and because LHR is a co-terminal with LGW that’s within rights whereas expecting them to fly you to MAN or BHX is rather more at their discretion – or if US Airways won’t book you on their flight you are indeed entitled to ask them to book you on another airline.

Andy

I think that the plan is to send all our criminals to Oz on £10 fares, and not let them come back again! :diablo:

Andy

Marxists and sociologists.

…and me! :dev2:

Proletariat Defn: The class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labor

The sort of people who, if we are honest about it, used to and probably still do go on charter flights. Actually I have nothing against “the propletariat” in general (either the term or those who are membere) – the definition puts me firmly in that category anyway – but I am still of the opinion that the generally uninformed [in this country] end up causing far too many problems for themselves and for others through their own ignorance, and this case is one of those. Trust in the professionals is absolutely necessary in this case – anything else ignorantly ignores the fact that the captain could arrange for the demise of the aeroplane and all of its passengers in any number of ways during a flight from Palma to the UK. And as I said before, I would be prepared to bet that the vast majority of those objecting passengers would, in their own jobs, tell anyone looking on and suggesting that they didn’t know what they were doing, to f-off.

Andy