5 ms·

But the smaller planes are more efficient and scale better.

std_throwaway 9y ago
More efficient in what terms?
matt4077 9y ago
There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA. It's easy to build a new runway, or a new airport, in the desert, or when you can evict anyone in the way. But try doing in a country ruled by law, when the city has long engulfed the airport build in the 60s.
- skybrian 9y ago
  There could be more hubs though. Pittsburgh was once a major hub. Could it come back again? Any other airports like that?
  - dx034 9y ago
    It currently looks like you'll get more direct connections and thus fewer hubs. Some routes will never be direct (rural US to rural Europe) but it's enough to have 1-2 hubs serving those. All major city connections can be direct. However, that will not necessarily reduce congestion for large airports, the NYC area then has to serve more destinations than before (by shifting away from hub traffic to LHR).
- txcwpalpha 9y ago
  The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty congested as well. SFO might become extremely congested in the future as they don't have much room to expand. However, that's still only <10 airports in a world of thousands. Pretty much every major Asian airport (with the exception of Haneda) has tons of room to expand, and most are already doing so. Congestion is hardly an issue there. Even in the US, there are still airports with plenty of unused capacity: DFW, Denver, Dulles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc have plenty of room to build new terminals and runways as needed. Even LAX and ATL are still sitting on plenty of land awaiting terminal expansion. And the same can be said for much of the small-medium sized airports in the US as well. The A380 is important to JFK and LHR slots, but I think it's much more likely that we see a the growth of alternate airports and more point-to-point travel than it is that the entire industry will make an about-face regarding the A380 just for the sake of a handful of airports.
  - saryant 9y ago
    Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots. The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates. (In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)
    - txcwpalpha 9y ago
      Aye. It's a similar situation for DFW. The original master plan called for thirteen terminals (see pic [1]), not including the additional cargo terminals/ramps. It currently has 5, and although it will probably never expand to 13, there is enough land space for plenty of expansion. 1: https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppson-copy.jpg https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppso...
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    But the points that people want to fly to are those busy airports. New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. And traffic growth to those destinations is huge. Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.
    - txcwpalpha 9y ago
      That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably. > Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested. Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic. 1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-passengers-terminating-at-heathrow-airport-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA Between 30 and 40% of passengers departing from JFK or Newark will go on to a connection [1]. Switching to point-to-point travel means reducing traffic at these hubs. [1] https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR_2015.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR_2015.pdf
- dx034 9y ago
  Frankfurt is nowhere near runway capacity. They built another runway <10yrs ago for that reason. Munich is the only airport in Germany somewhat restricted by runway capacity at the moment.
paulmd 9y ago
Airport capacity scales with number of planes. Major airports are often running at capacity already and can't handle more planes. Increasing airport capacity is a very non-trivial problem. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, like traffic congestion on a roadway.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Airport capacity scales with number of planes. There's another factor: these big-ass planes of A380 and alike produce a lot of wake turbulence - in fact, the A380 so much that it has its own strength category and its wake turbulences nearly shot another plane out of the sky (http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3 http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3). This means that an airport may dispatch more lighter planes in the same time than heavier planes.
- icebraining 9y ago
  There's no tragedy of the commons; airport fees can and are raised, leading some companies to switch to nearby airports, like Ryanair is doing in Brussels (moving some flights to Charleroi). And as fees increase, so does the profit potential of building a new low-fees airport farther away.
- JshWright 9y ago
  The other way to take pressure off airport capacity is to reduce use of the hub and spoke model. If you fly direct from Buffalo to Tampa, you don't need to take up a slot in Newark.

More efficient in what terms?

There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA. It's easy to build a new runway, or a new airport, in the desert, or when you can evict anyone in the way. But try doing in a country ruled by law, when the city has long engulfed the airport build in the 60s.

skybrian 9y ago
There could be more hubs though. Pittsburgh was once a major hub. Could it come back again? Any other airports like that?
- dx034 9y ago
  It currently looks like you'll get more direct connections and thus fewer hubs. Some routes will never be direct (rural US to rural Europe) but it's enough to have 1-2 hubs serving those. All major city connections can be direct. However, that will not necessarily reduce congestion for large airports, the NYC area then has to serve more destinations than before (by shifting away from hub traffic to LHR).
txcwpalpha 9y ago
The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty congested as well. SFO might become extremely congested in the future as they don't have much room to expand. However, that's still only <10 airports in a world of thousands. Pretty much every major Asian airport (with the exception of Haneda) has tons of room to expand, and most are already doing so. Congestion is hardly an issue there. Even in the US, there are still airports with plenty of unused capacity: DFW, Denver, Dulles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc have plenty of room to build new terminals and runways as needed. Even LAX and ATL are still sitting on plenty of land awaiting terminal expansion. And the same can be said for much of the small-medium sized airports in the US as well. The A380 is important to JFK and LHR slots, but I think it's much more likely that we see a the growth of alternate airports and more point-to-point travel than it is that the entire industry will make an about-face regarding the A380 just for the sake of a handful of airports.
- saryant 9y ago
  Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots. The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates. (In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)
  - txcwpalpha 9y ago
    Aye. It's a similar situation for DFW. The original master plan called for thirteen terminals (see pic [1]), not including the additional cargo terminals/ramps. It currently has 5, and although it will probably never expand to 13, there is enough land space for plenty of expansion. 1: https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppson-copy.jpg https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppso...
- mpweiher 9y ago
  But the points that people want to fly to are those busy airports. New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations. And traffic growth to those destinations is huge. Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.
  - txcwpalpha 9y ago
    That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably. > Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested. Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic. 1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-passengers-terminating-at-heathrow-airport-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA Between 30 and 40% of passengers departing from JFK or Newark will go on to a connection [1]. Switching to point-to-point travel means reducing traffic at these hubs. [1] https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR_2015.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR_2015.pdf
dx034 9y ago
Frankfurt is nowhere near runway capacity. They built another runway <10yrs ago for that reason. Munich is the only airport in Germany somewhat restricted by runway capacity at the moment.

paulmd 9y ago

Airport capacity scales with number of planes. Major airports are often running at capacity already and can't handle more planes. Increasing airport capacity is a very non-trivial problem. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, like traffic congestion on a roadway.

mschuster91 9y ago
> Airport capacity scales with number of planes. There's another factor: these big-ass planes of A380 and alike produce a lot of wake turbulence - in fact, the A380 so much that it has its own strength category and its wake turbulences nearly shot another plane out of the sky (http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3 http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3). This means that an airport may dispatch more lighter planes in the same time than heavier planes.
icebraining 9y ago
There's no tragedy of the commons; airport fees can and are raised, leading some companies to switch to nearby airports, like Ryanair is doing in Brussels (moving some flights to Charleroi). And as fees increase, so does the profit potential of building a new low-fees airport farther away.
JshWright 9y ago
The other way to take pressure off airport capacity is to reduce use of the hub and spoke model. If you fly direct from Buffalo to Tampa, you don't need to take up a slot in Newark.