With the Airports Commission about to launch its twelve week consultation in to the shortlisted options for how the UK can maintain its status as an international hub, Heathrow chief executive officer, John Holland-Kaye, last week warned that Britain could lose its crown as home to the biggest airport for international traffic in Europe to Holland, within the next ten years.
As one of only a handful of hub airports in the world, London competes with Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam for the transfer traffic which makes daily direct, long-haul routes to emerging markets - predicted to make up nearly half of global GDP by 2050 - viable. With UK businesses trading 20 times more with emerging markets with daily direct flights than those with less frequent or no direct service, Britain needs more flights to more cities than France, Germany and the Netherlands to win the race for jobs and growth that will otherwise go to international competitors.
The most recent traffic figures from each airport show that whilst all four are recording increases in international passenger traffic, the UK’s hub is showing the slowest rate of growth. Paris has increased most quickly in the twelve months since August, up four per cent, followed by Amsterdam (3.8 per cent), and Frankfurt (3.1 per cent). Heathrow showed the lowest growth rate, at 2.1 per cent and this is almost entirely based on higher loads factors and larger aircraft.
Analysis of Heathrow’s winter schedule using data for the first week of February in 2014 and 2015 also found that of the four countries, only Heathrow has been unable to increase the number of airlines operating from it this winter. By contrast, Paris has seen ten new airlines, Amsterdam seven, and Frankfurt five, with Paris now hosting over a hundred airlines compared to Heathrow’s 81.
Whilst Heathrow was able to add only one previously un-served destination to its schedule, BA’s flight to Austin Texas, Paris was able to add 18 new destinations from 13 different airlines, including to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, and Xi’an, the largest industrial economy in China’s Shaanxi province.
Frankfurt was able to add seventeen destinations amongst eight different airlines, including Changsha, one of China’s major transportation hubs, and Gaziantep, Kayseri, and Elazig in Turkey – part of the MINT group of nations tipped as the next emerging economic giants. Amsterdam was able to add nine new routes, including to Jakarta and Egypt.
“Britain benefits from having the biggest international hub airport in the world, one of only six airports in the world with more than 50 regular long-haul flights. Heathrow gets British business people and their exports to the world’s growing economies – but lack of capacity at Heathrow means we are being overtaken by we are being overtaken by our European competitors – they are taking the growth that should be ours. Britain could and should win the race for growth,” said John Holland-Kaye.
As an island trading nation, connectivity has been central to the UK’s global trading position over the past three hundred years, and is now more essential than ever. The capacity constraint at Heathrow parallels the loss of Britain’s crown as the largest maritime freight port in the UK, after being overtaken by the Netherlands in 2012. Since then, UK ports have slipped down the “big league” of major ports, and are increasingly relegated to the role of feeders to the continent.
With the Airport Commissions’ consultation imminent, Holland-Kaye said: “We can’t sit idly by and hope the right decision is made. It’s time to speak out in support of our hub. It’s time to respond to the consultation. We should hang our heads in shame if we let slip the competitive advantage handed down to us by previous generations.”
“We have a choice. We can have the vision and confidence to develop Heathrow in to the world’s best connected airport, putting Britain at the heart of the global economy, or we can accept that in the future Britain will be on the branch-line to growth – having to fly via Paris, Frankfurt or Istanbul to get to emerging markets,” he added.
In our analysis, below, we look at capacity changes at Europe’s five largest airports by passenger traffic over the past ten years. Using data from OAG Schedules Analyser from 2004 through to 2014 we highlight the changes in departure capacity at each of the hub airports. The chart clealy shows the rapid growth at Istanbul Ataturk Airport thanks to the agressive network expansion of Turkish Airlines, with capacity rising 234.6 per cent between 2004 and 2013. During this same period London Heathrow's departure capacity rose just 0.9 per cent versus 8.5 per cent at Paris, 10.3 per cent at Frankfurt and 25.1 per cent at Amsterdam.
Data provided by 
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