Contents
SASIG 2014/15 Meeting Date
Regional News
Industry News
European News
Parliamentary News
Government News
Media News
SASIG 2014/15 Meeting Date
6 March 2015
Meetings are held at Local Government House, Smith Square, SW1P 3HZ, location map.
Regional News
22 December 2014 – Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield has announced two new flights for its 2015-16 schedule. Holiday firms Thomson and First Choice has revealed that next year will see the introduction of a day trip to Lapland and an additional flight to Tenerife from Doncaster.
23 December 2014 – A business park featuring offices, factories, a hotel and a car showroom could be created close to East Midlands Airport. Developers are looking to build on an unused 3.9 acre site, near to the M1 motorway in Castle Donington, owned by motorway services operator Moto Hospitality. It is expected the business park would be able to accommodate between 200 and 300 workers. The site already has planning consent for new access from the Finger Farm roundabout in front of the airport. A planning application for the park is due to be submitted next year.
26 December 2014 – Snow forced the closure of Liverpool John Lennon Airport and the delay of flights from Manchester Airport for a short time over the Christmas period.
Industry News
22 December 2014 – A number of UK airports have released statements suggesting that they are expecting their busiest ever Christmas periods: Birmingham; East Midlands; Edinburgh; Heathrow; Leeds Bradford; and Manchester.
22 December 2014 – Qatar Airways will base its first Airbus A350-900 at Heathrow Airport in early 2015 where it will undertake noise demonstrations with the airport operator.
25 December 2014 – Dubai International Airport (DIA) handled 64.5m passengers in the first 11 months of 2014, according to the latest official data. During December Dubai Airports Company said it expected this to rise to 71m passengers by the end of the calendar year, putting DIA close to the number of passengers handled by Heathrow Airport.
25 December 2014 – The airline operator Aer Lingus have rejected the recent bid by AEG to buy the company.
28 December 2014 – Industry organisations and bodies will be attending the ‘Future Flyers and Expert Engineers’ event which will be held on January 24 in Crawley.
European News
19 December 2014 – The European Environment Agency has published the report ‘Noise in Europe 2014’. The report attempts to quantify the scale of ‘noise pollution’ across Europe, assess what actions are being taken and to scope those that may need to be considered in the future, in order to redress the issue.
23 December 2014 – The EU’s TEN-T Programme will invest over €3m for the deployment of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) in eight European airports. The project is expected to improve flight predictability and optimise airport operations. The airports of Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin, Hamburg, Lisbon, Lyon, Manchester and Stuttgart will be benefitting from the new A-CDM system, leading to improved air traffic information sharing, processes and procedures across seven European Member States. The project’s ambition is to optimise the use of network capacity and improve passenger service through better predictability and punctuality of flight departures. It will support the Single European Sky initiative (SES), which aims to increase Europe’s airspace capacity, reduce the risk of accidents and the environmental impact of flights and cut the costs for passengers. Specifically, the project aims to facilitate the implementation of SESAR, the EU’s research programme for the modernisation of European ATM. The project was selected for EU funding with the support of external experts under the TEN-T Multi-Annual Call 2013, priority ‘Air Traffic Management’. Its implementation will be monitored by INEA, the European Commission’s Innovation and Networks Executive Agency. The project is to be completed by December 2015.
Parliamentary News
15 December 2014 – The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee announced the publications of their Seventh Report ‘Connected world: Agreeing ambitious Sustainable Development Goals in 2015’.
23 December 2014 – The All Party Parliamentary Group on Heathrow and the Wider Economy published its report ‘Noise from Heathrow Airport’ on December 18. The report calls for aircraft noise to be measured more accurately and for more details about proposed new flight paths and the impact of new technology on noise, among other issues.
Government News
24 December 2014 – The Chairman of the Airports Commission Sir Howard Davies has rebuked Network Rail for apparently ignoring a recommendation to improve the London to Stansted rail link. The Commission’s interim report concluded that although there should be no airport expansion at Stansted in the short-term, there was a need for a ‘detailed study’ and ‘serious consideration’ to laying extra rail lines from the capital to make best use of the airport. But Network Rail did not include any plans to do so when it outlined its strategy for network development in the Eastern region in November.
Media News
27 December 2014 – Campaign group PlaneWrong have issued a claim that changes to flight paths by Gatwick Airport were implemented without direct consultation with those affected by noise pollution. The claim is currently supported by Member of Parliament for Reigate Crispin Blunt.
28 December 2014 – A new report by the consumer group ‘Which?’ has found that one in five flights to and from ten UK airports are delayed – the travel industry defines flights as ‘on time’ if they are early to less than 15 minutes late. But 20 per cent of the flights measured for the study were reported to fall outside of this definition. The airline operator Flybe is the least delayed of the UK airlines with an average delay of 10 minutes for flights to the UK between September 2013 and August 2014.
SASIG ParliamentaryNews Bulletin 21 Dec -28 Dec
SASIG Regional&IndustryNews Bulletin 21 Dec – 28 Dec
The Parliamentary information in this Bulletin is sourced from De Havilland Information Services plc .