Q I’m sure it would be easier to expand another airport, eg Birmingham. Why is Britain still so London-centric?
Sue E
A The government has given the go-ahead to Heathrow’s controversial £49bn expansion plan at the UK’s busiest hub airport, including a third runway. The additional infrastructure could see passenger numbers rising by 79 per cent to 150 million. That increase is equivalent to “four Birminghams” – or indeed a Manchester, a Birmingham and a Bristol airport. Your question is all the more relevant because as a whole, the UK has plenty of overcapacity. Why should a vast swathe of land be torn up – and the M25 diverted west – when simply by rebalancing the load at airports would accommodate the growth in passenger numbers? Three airports in particular have excellent runways that are sadly empty for most of the time: Cardiff, Prestwick (in southwest Scotland) and Doncaster Sheffield, which is currently moribund. Many others, including Birmingham, would welcome more traffic – especially of the longhaul variety, which is Heathrow’s speciality.
The government is doubly keen on growth beyond southeast England, so surely ministers could simply direct airlines such as British Airways – the major player at Heathrow – to expand elsewhere? Unfortunately, aviation doesn’t work like that. Airports are gravitational: the more passengers they attract, the more likely airlines are to establish new routes – in turn attracting additional travellers. That is particularly the case at Heathrow, where about one in four passengers is connecting between flights.
Yes, there are some flights at Heathrow that are overwhelmingly “point-to-point” – notably BA’s small sub-fleet of shorthaul aircraft that serve locations such as Prague, Bucharest and Marseille. But the reason British Airways operates them is because it has the market to itself on those routes from Heathrow. Move them to another departure airport, and that edge vanishes. BA would simply not bother with them.
One particular facet of Birmingham that has not been properly appreciated, though, is the big improvement in journey times from London once HS2 is completed. The West Midlands airport could pick up a fair amount of passengers from west London, which will be just 32 minutes away. But I don’t think that will deter Heathrow’s expansion from going ahead.
open image in gallery
There is plenty of time to shop around for a family holiday to the Spanish island (Getty/iStock)
Q I am looking at fares for a family week in Mallorca in midsummer – three adults and two children – flying out from Gatwick on 13 June and back a week later at sensible times. It’s nowhere near the school holidays, yet for five of us the cost is coming out at almost £2,000 once hold luggage is included (essential with little ones). I’m inclined to book now regardless, given fares are unlikely to come down, but just wanted to check that this was a sensible thing to do in the circumstances.
Name supplied
A The basic easyJet fare I am looking at, flying early afternoon from Gatwick on 13 June, returning on 20 June at lunchtime, is £240 return. That looks just about reasonable to me – but evidently the baggage issue (as well, I imagine, selecting specific seats) has pushed a basic total of £1,200 up by two-thirds.
If you are keen to fly on easyJet, and particularly if you have further travel planned with the airline in the coming year, I would consider joining easyJet Plus. It costs £249 per adult (£155 for children) but buys you free seat selection (including the most sought-after places) and, more importantly, a large cabin bag. EasyJet has really generous dimensions. If you are happy to take these into the cabin, then membership for three adults and two children will cost £1,057. Yes, that’s about £250 more than the fare you have been quoted, but will deliver benefits any time from now for the coming year.
But other airlines are available, and in your position I would be looking at a combination of British Airways going out at 9.10 am on 13 June, getting you there in time for lunch, and returning on Jet2 at 10.35 am on 20 June, ditto. At present, that is priced at under £200 per person. Crucially, both airlines are very generous with their cabin baggage allowance (allowing a roll-along case as well as a smaller personal item) and BA even seats families together free of charge. With a couple of 23kg checked bags each way, you could get the cost down to £1,200.
open image in gallery
In for the longhaul: the trip of more than 9,000 miles takes around 17 hours (Qantas)
Q Have you ever done the Heathrow to Perth non-stop flight on Qantas? If not, are you tempted?
Julian D-S
A I was a passenger aboard the maiden nonstop passenger flight from the UK to Australia on 25 March 2018. (There had been previous missions without paying passengers as far back as the 1980s, but this was the first commercial flight.) It was the joint longest I have been on a plane – the previous 17-hour hop was a Virgin Atlantic flight to Shanghai that diverted to Beijing. The time passed remarkably quickly, partly because the Boeing 787 has been comfortably kitted out and because of the onboard service: time-appropriate catering on demand. I was in an aisle economy seat with the good fortune of having an empty one next to me; being in a middle seat would not be my idea of fun.
For anybody desperate to get to Western Australia in a hurry, I would unreservedly recommend it. The nonstop is ideal for older or frail travellers who just want to get there rather than change planes somewhere random in the middle of the night. But for everyone else: make the journey a bit less of an endurance test and more of an adventure. It will be kinder for you and for the planet.
For you: on a trip of more than 9,000 miles from London to Perth, it makes sense to break the journey. Enjoy one of the locations along the way – from Dubai to Mauritius – and helpfully begin your adjustment to the new time zone.
For the planet: such a long flight is an expensive operation in terms of fuel, both financially and environmentally. A lot of the kerosene on board is simply to carry the fuel for later in the flight. While take-off is the most energy-hungry stage of the flight, breaking the journey into single stages of six to nine hours reduces the overall impact. Your question is particularly pertinent because Qantas is now planning its first London-Sydney nonstops, a trip of about 19 hours. Again, stops are the best.
open image in gallery
No Goa? It’s important to obtain your Indian visa before spending any money on flights, tours or accommodation (Getty/iStock)
Q We are off to India in a few weeks. We tried to apply for our visas online. The form is very user-unfriendly and almost impossible to complete. We ended up paying £100 each to a company who offer the service of completing applications. They only required a fraction of the information required on the form we tried to complete. Yet hey presto: two days later our visas have arrived. What is going on here?
Tim S
A I feel your pain. I am about to travel to India and duly did battle with the nation’s labyrinthine visa system. It is boggling in its demands for information, such as all the countries you have visited in the past 10 years and the birthplaces of your grandparents. (Both of these questions seek to identify people with Pakistani connections.)
If you spend the necessary two hours or so completing the form as faithfully as you can, your problems may only just be beginning: paying for the thing can be equally exasperating, as you cycle through various forms of payment to find one the computer regards as acceptable.
Your intermediary understands how the tangled red tape brings immense frustration, and evidently knows the “right” answers to complete the form. A senior travel industry figure with many years of experience sending tourists to India tells me his clients often just write “London” as the place of birth for all their grandparents. “If you don’t know for certain, they won’t either,” he said. I cannot condone anyone failing to complete an official form fastidiously – for example by restricting their list of countries visited to those for which a stamp appears in the passport.
The kindest way to characterise the behaviour of the company that helped you, I believe, is “taking shortcuts”. They must know from years of experience that border officials are unlikely to look too deeply into visa-holders’ veracity. I hope your frontier experience is swift and unobtrusive. Perhaps, like me, you have shelled out extra for a five-year, multi-entry visa to save having to go through the same rigmarole for a while. Finally, a reminder to everyone that if you need a visa or other permit for a country, obtain it before you spend anything on flights, tours or accommodation.
Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @SimonCalder
