Leeds Bradford: Ryanair Flights, New Routes & Base Updates

[lbaspotter]

It’s worth pointing out the Airport was always planning to fully resurface the concrete runway with asphalt within the next 5-10 years period. AENA would have fully known this when they were doing due-diligence.

Hopefully it may help with Aircraft performance a little bit.

 

[BCFC]

I will be happy with 3 x 737-200 MAX’s….

 

[Statto]

It’s worth pointing out the Airport was always planning to fully resurface the concrete runway with asphalt within the next 5-10 years period. AENA would have fully known this when they were doing due-diligence.

Hopefully it may help with Aircraft performance a little bit.

Exactly, all the REGEN plans and the debt finance in place to fund it, is something that they will have had visibility on.They will also have looked at the airport’s passenger growth plans, the night flying rules and anything else relevant to making a major investment. Unless they negotiated a steep discount (of which there is no evidence) then the fact they went ahead with should tell us that they have confidence in what they are buying.

 

[LBA4EVER]

I'm with you on this one, the runway has been the achilles heel of the airport for years and will be for a long time in the future. Arena need to take another look at this and see if they can come up with a solution otherwise we will always be a bucket and spade airport. We have the potential and a passenger catchment area that could support flights over the pond and the Middle East but airlines are expanding at other UK airports offering these type of flights while we keep using the excuse it will happen when the new terminal is fully open. If I"m going to say Dubai I want to go direct not by two flights involving a change of aircraft in say Turkey with potentially a long lay over.

Cant believe everyones agreeing with me! 😂😊 Move the R32 TDZ back around 200-300 metres so still not at the very start of the runway and we would be in a FAR better state of play, and although the R14 TDZ maybe more of an issue new tech might help?
Like mentioned above ME operators are not going to touch an airport with a 2250metre long runway where aircraft land 500-600metres into its length, plus of course LBA suffers a little more with bad weather conditions than most other airports, so yes the new owners need to look into this i feel.

 

[Statto]

Cant believe everyones agreeing with me! 😂😊 Move that R32 TDZ back around 200-300 metres so still not at the very start of the runway and we would be in a FAR better state of play, and although the R14 TDZ maybe more of an issue new tech might help?
Like mentioned above ME operators are not going to touch an airport with a 2250metre long runway where aircraft land 500-600metres into its length, plus of course LBA suffers a little more with bad weather conditions than most other airports, so yes the new owners need to look into this i feel.

I don’t think anyone has said it wouldn’t be a good idea if it could be done. What they have argued - over and over again - is that it obviously can’t be done economically. It clearly must be more complicated than just repainting the runway markings, otherwise it would have been done already. Instead, what you are probably looking at is a multi-million pound major construction project. The airport owners are in the process of spending multi-millions on the airport - just not on this idea. So they have the money, they just don’t agree with you it’s a priority. You either need to write to the airport telling them that they are wrong or move on.

 

[Aviador]

@Statto is spot on. We would all love to see the airport flatten the runway and address the long displaced threshold but when faced with the reality of siting, installing, and legally calibrating a brand-new ILS system at a cost easily pushing upwards of between £5 million and £10 million. That alone is enough to sober anyone up.

Imagine the disruption? You would have to shut down LBA’s precision instrument landing capability for weeks, if not months, during the installation. In Yorkshire weather (today is not great), operating without a full ILS means catastrophic flight diversions and potentially millions of pounds in compensation pay-outs the airport would need to make to airlines.

Before all that the airport would need to flatten the Slopes, an earth-moving nightmare.
To get rid of the Runway 14 downslope or the Runway 32 hump to accommodate longer, tail-strike-prone aircraft, you are talking about a massive civil engineering project to reprofile the entire topography of the ridge, again significant disruption with months potentially stretching into years of the airport closure.

You would need to bring in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of infill, completely strip the existing asphalt, re-grade the bedrock, and relay the entire runway surface. This is easily a £50 million to £100 million+ mega-project and that would be a conservative estimate.

Don't forget that the 1985 runway extension sits directly on top of the A658 airport tunnel. Adding immense weight or altering the structural loads to flatten out the runway approach could require multi-million-pound reinforcement of the highway tunnel infrastructure below.

So yes it would be fantastic to get it done once and for all but would the cost vs benefit make it worth it? You only have to look at Birmingham airports £65 million 300m runway extension "to get more long haul", to see that even when the money is made available, it doesn't always pay off.

 

[White Heather]

@Statto is spot on. We would all love to see the airport flatten the runway and address the long displaced threshold but when faced with the reality of siting, installing, and legally calibrating a brand-new ILS system at a cost easily pushing upwards of between £5 million and £10 million. That alone is enough to sober anyone up.

Imagine the disruption? You would have to shut down LBA’s precision instrument landing capability for weeks, if not months, during the installation. In Yorkshire weather (today is not great), operating without a full ILS means catastrophic flight diversions and potentially millions of pounds in compensation pay-outs the airport would need to make to airlines.

Before all that the airport would need to flatten the Slopes, an earth-moving nightmare.
To get rid of the Runway 14 downslope or the Runway 32 hump to accommodate longer, tail-strike-prone aircraft, you are talking about a massive civil engineering project to reprofile the entire topography of the ridge, again significant disruption with months potentially stretching into years of the airport closure.

You would need to bring in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of infill, completely strip the existing asphalt, re-grade the bedrock, and relay the entire runway surface. This is easily a £50 million to £100 million+ mega-project and that would be a conservative estimate.

Don't forget that the 1985 runway extension sits directly on top of the A658 airport tunnel. Adding immense weight or altering the structural loads to flatten out the runway approach could require multi-million-pound reinforcement of the highway tunnel infrastructure below.

So yes it would be fantastic to get it done once and for all but would the cost vs benefit make it worth it? You only have to look at Birmingham airports £65 million 300m runway extension "to get more long haul", to see that even when the money is made available, it doesn't always pay off.

It would be cheaper and less disruptive to build a runway extension on stilts at the Horsforth end, similar to that at Funchal even if it did mean a CPO for a number of properties on Arran Drive, but it wont ever happen. The benefits still dont justify the cost and probably never will. Nor would planning approval be given. Sadly, LBA is what it is and in time, aircraft/engine developments will increase the range of flights possible off our compromised runway without spending huge sums to gain relatively little.

 

[LBA4EVER]

I don’t think anyone has said it wouldn’t be a good idea if it could be done. What they have argued - over and over again - is that it obviously can’t be done economically. It clearly must be more complicated than just repainting the runway markings, otherwise it would have been done already. Instead, what you are probably looking at is a multi-million pound major construction project. The airport owners are in the process of spending multi-millions on the airport - just not on this idea. So they have the money, they just don’t agree with you it’s a priority. You either need to write to the airport telling them that they are wrong or move on.

Pointless spending multi-millions on terminal improvements if they aint a decent runway to land or take off on!! Bit of a joke id say! The problem is right there in front of the LBA Management but never looked at, can they not see this is one of the main reasons for lack of growth, its the stigma that haunts the airport! The 4th most populated region but an airport as we currently have!
Yes the bucket and spade flights will always be there using suitable aircraft for the LBA runway but its just too marginal for anything more longhaul, its just takes that one error.
Whats quite interesting is that runway length available for landing is only a tiny bit more than before the extension in 1984. Before 1984 the R32 TDZ was set fairly close to the start of the runway but its now 500-600m down on a slight slope, this can be clearly.
I really hope im proved wrong and that when our terminal infrastructure projects are complete the airport sees new operators both short and long haul but i just have a sneaky feeling im correct, i also hate this defenders of the runway attitude that seems to occur, does my head in (ok definitely going to hide now although it is a forum where we have different views)

 

[Aviador]

Pointless spending multi-millions on terminal improvements if they aint a decent runway to land or take off on!! Bit of a joke id say! The problem is right there in front of the LBA Management but never looked at, can they not see this is one of the main reasons for lack of growth, its the stigma that haunts the airport! Yes the bucket and spade flights will always be there using suitable aircraft for the LBA runway but its just too marginal for anything more longhaul.
Whats quite interesting is that runway length available for landing is only a tiny bit more than before the extension in 1984. Before 1984 the R32 TDZ was set fairly close to the start of the runway but its now 500-600m down on a slight slope, this can be clearly.
I really hope im proved wrong and that when our terminal infrastructure projects are complete the airport sees new operators both short and long haul but i just have a sneaky feeling im correct, i also hate this defenders of the runway attitude that seems to occur, does my head in (ok definitely going to hide now although it is a forum where we have different views)

I don't think anyone disagrees with you in that it would be lovely to have a perfect runway but as I think I said earlier, the cost vs benefit just don't add up. You could always use Doncaster's super flat runway but then you have a long flat runway in the wrong place entirely.

 

[LBA4EVER]

@Statto is spot on. We would all love to see the airport flatten the runway and address the long displaced threshold but when faced with the reality of siting, installing, and legally calibrating a brand-new ILS system at a cost easily pushing upwards of between £5 million and £10 million. That alone is enough to sober anyone up.

Imagine the disruption? You would have to shut down LBA’s precision instrument landing capability for weeks, if not months, during the installation. In Yorkshire weather (today is not great), operating without a full ILS means catastrophic flight diversions and potentially millions of pounds in compensation pay-outs the airport would need to make to airlines.

Before all that the airport would need to flatten the Slopes, an earth-moving nightmare.
To get rid of the Runway 14 downslope or the Runway 32 hump to accommodate longer, tail-strike-prone aircraft, you are talking about a massive civil engineering project to reprofile the entire topography of the ridge, again significant disruption with months potentially stretching into years of the airport closure.

You would need to bring in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of infill, completely strip the existing asphalt, re-grade the bedrock, and relay the entire runway surface. This is easily a £50 million to £100 million+ mega-project and that would be a conservative estimate.

Don't forget that the 1985 runway extension sits directly on top of the A658 airport tunnel. Adding immense weight or altering the structural loads to flatten out the runway approach could require multi-million-pound reinforcement of the highway tunnel infrastructure below.

So yes it would be fantastic to get it done once and for all but would the cost vs benefit make it worth it? You only have to look at Birmingham airports £65 million 300m runway extension "to get more long haul", to see that even when the money is made available, it doesn't always pay off.

Flattening out the runway and readjusting the ILS are 2 seperate things. Moving the TDZ back to the start of R32 on the flat section of runway with ILS adjustment would be alot cheaper but yes i agree still into the millions.

 

[HX3]

Was there not some adjusting of the ILS or updating of the equipment mentioned previously? I sort of recall this would provide additional takeoff/landing distance without any physical new runway pavement. It would be interesting to understand what the timeline is for this to come to fruition.

 

[Aviador]

Was there not some adjusting of the ILS or updating of the equipment mentioned previously? I sort of recall this would provide additional takeoff/landing distance without any physical new runway pavement. It would be interesting to understand what the timeline is for this to come to fruition.

Yes. We still don't know what this will mean in practice but any extra metres of take-off or landing distance will be appreciated.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

I don't think anyone disagrees with you in that it would be lovely to have a perfect runway but as I think I said earlier, the cost vs benefit just don't add up. You could always use Doncaster's super flat runway but then you have a long flat runway in the wrong place entirely.

I agree with you entirely, however the airports justification for halting the stand building project was that they could achieve the projected increase to 7m passengers based on the use of larger aircraft.

 

[Aviador]

I agree with you entirely, however the airports justification for halting the stand building project was that they could achieve the projected increase to 7m passengers based on the use of larger aircraft.

They did and two of their main carriers are operating the larger A321Neo aircraft.

 

[LBA4EVER]

Back to ryanair, what's the length of these new max10s in relation to the a321? Imagine a 228 pax 737 with longer fuselage but same size wings as an 800 or max8! ! Mindu dare i say this I far prefer the max8 over the 800s now certainly with the powerful engines so who knows the max10 like the 8 could be a winner.

 

[Aviador]

The max 8 is 39.52m
The max 10 is 43.8m

The A321 Neo is 44.51m

 

[YorkshireLad]

One thing i definitely noticed whilst in the alicante region last week and in the city of alicante itself is that tourism is booming, I've never seen it as busy! seems they is a shift back to the western med, people are playing it safe even though there are no safety concerns anyway.

Thought I’d reply on the Ryanair thread

Ryanair’s loads to Alicante are insane compared to other destinations - there are 3 flights today within 6.5 hours of each other, they’re all about 90% full. This is very much normal - it’s also worth noting loads suffer less at antisocial flight times than other places - the Canaries and Faro in particular have poor loads on late evening departures

Some destinations have higher average loads (especially Riga and Bucharest), but nothing quite consistently has the sheer volume of demand than Alicante with Ryanair

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

The issue with the max 10 is it's low to the ground and the size of the engines and length of the fuselage. Unlike the NEO which doesn't have the same problems.

The M10 will not be seen in LBA with Ryanair. I can see eventual base of 3 MAX8200 or maybe even 4.

Unfortunately this is a time where MOL/Ryanair wish they'd gone with the 321NEO over the MAX10. The 321NEO would be less restricted into some airfields then the MAX10 is clearly going to be.

 

[GolfFox]

Flattening out the runway and readjusting the ILS are 2 seperate things. Moving the TDZ back to the start of R32 on the flat section of runway with ILS adjustment would be alot cheaper but yes i agree still into the millions.

If you do that, what about mandatory RESA?? Wasn't that why it had to be moved in the first place?? I recall that to leave it where it was would have entailed filling in the small reservoir and creating the aforesaid overrun/undershoot safety area.

 

[Aviador]

The issue with the max 10 is it's low to the ground and the size of the engines and length of the fuselage. Unlike the NEO which doesn't have the same problems.

The M10 will not be seen in LBA with Ryanair. I can see eventual base of 3 MAX8200 or maybe even 4.

Unfortunately this is a time where MOL/Ryanair wish they'd gone with the 321NEO over the MAX10. The 321NEO would be less restricted into some airfields then the MAX10 is clearly going to be.

I fully agree, although we might still see the aircraft under certain circumstances, such as if places like Palma or Alicante become Max 10 bases. They are close enough not to face weight restrictions, but runway ground clearance on undulating runways remains an issue for LBA and other UK airports especially.