You Must Be From Away

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Full disclosure: I worked in the aviation industry for over 40 years. This might make me partisan. It also might mean that I know a bit about the way the business works. Certainly more than Kurt Beck.

Kurt Beck is the ever-so-slightly dim-witted Premier of Rhineland-Palatinate.

He’s against aircraft noise, despite wildly subsidising 2 airports (Hahn and Zweibrücken) in his fiefdom and OWNING one of them (Hahn) outright.

Frankfurt airport, home base to Europe’s largest airline and either 2nd or 3rd busiest airport in Europe, is in the neighbouring state of Hesse, which is run by Beck’s nemesis, one-time Chancellor hopeful Roland Koch.

And given that VSTOL isn’t a viable option for commercial aircraft, their approach to FRA (or EDDF, if you prefer ICAO nomenclature) takes them over some fairly heavily built up areas.

Some of them in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Mainz and the surrounding countryside, for example.

Now, I’d REALLY prefer not to have aircraft noise but a) given that I chose to have a short-ish drive to work and b) the airport was there before we (and everyone else) moved here, you grin and bear it.

And I’d CERTAINLY prefer not to have aircraft movements at night, which is what the current hoohah’s all about, but you grin and bear it.

FRA/EEDF have been banging on for about a decade about the need for a 4th runway and part of Koch’s greasy political deal was the usual lie balancing act, promising residents i.e. voters that there’d be NO night flights and promising industry i.e. the tax base that there WOULD be night flights.

There are currently around 40, the mediation committee agreed on 17 and a court the other week said that 17’s WAAAY too many.

Lufthansa Cargo – the main user of night-flight slots – has been saying very quietly for years that its business model loses viability (it’s marginally profitable at best and you’d probably achieve a higher ROI by putting the investment in a savings account) with every reduction in night-flights.

Now they’ve come out openly (and – for them – quite emphatically) and said that no night-flights means no freighters (they’ve got 19) means a 50% reduction in lift capacity (they transport half their traffic on freighters and half on Lufthansa’s passenger aircraft) means a proportionate cut in staff numbers.

Kurt wakes up and spouts something about “blackmail”, they should “operate freighters from HIS (Hahn) airport” (120 km and 90 minutes distant) and – get this – “Germany won’t put up with this insult.”

Now if Kurt was a bit more clued-up, he’d have understood big words like “logistic chain” and “Just-in-time”. [Thinks: “Aaah. Foreign words. Probably not, then..”]

Manufacturers need to have their production delivered next day in global markets that never shut down. And this means that you just can’t stop the clock for 8 hours a day.

Here’s a film clip, Kurt.

At the beginning of the film, loads of flights leave North America and Asia and head towards Europe. Then there’s frantic of activity within Europe all day long, followed by a heap of lunchtime departures to North America and evening departures to Asia.

Now given that a big chunk of the 1.7 million tonnes that Lufthansa Cargo transports annually switches between freighters and passenger flights somewhere along the line (well, yes, you COULD operate an MD11 freighter profitably between Frankfurt and Madrid, Kurt. Maybe once a week, which sort of negates the raison d’etre for using airfreight. No?), it’s of great use to have the 2 modes close to each other.

At the same airport, for example. Transfer between aircraft in an hour if needed.

Which is why industry builds distribution centres close to airports and why some manufacturers even move their PRODUCTION close to airports and – this goes without saying – why logistics companies are clustered around airports like bees around a hive.

Remove the driving logic behind this behaviour (the ability to send things to places when they’re needed) and there’ll be a big sucking sound (companies relocating) and a thunderous banging at the doors of the unemployment agencies by all those people who don’t have jobs anymore.

So why don’t they just unload cargo from passenger flights and truck it to Hahn and vice-versa?

Because a) you lose at least half a day in transit and b) you’re putting an extra 5,000 tons A DAY onto the roads.

Look at it this way, Kurt.

You live in Hamburg (wish you did – you wouldn’t be Premier around here..) and you want to fly to Singapore.

Singapore flights leave Frankfurt at 11pm, so they can’t fly from FRA/EDDF anymore. They have to fly from Hahn.

So you have to be in Hahn at 10-ish, which means flying from Hamburg to FRA and leaving FRA at 20:00 for the 1.5 hour (if you’re lucky..) bus ride.

Which means checking in at Hamburg sometime around 4 in the afternoon.

Or you could just fly to Amsterdam at 21:00 instead and take a flight from there.

Thought you’d do that, Kurt.

And that’s exactly what will happen with cargo traffic flows.

You just watch.