A tremendous row has kicked off about Heathrow’s “outage” on Friday, following a fire at an electricity substation. The airport closed for most of the day, on grounds of safety, saying that the essential problem was not with the airport per se, but with the national grid. Other substations were available, said the grid. Yes, said the airport, but it takes too long to switch over. Shouldn’t there be a contingency plan? – asked the politicians. Shouldn’t there be resilience? Meanwhile something like 1300 flights were cancelled, leaving a quarter of a million people stranded, not just at Heathrow, but all over the world. Incoming airborne passengers had to be diverted to Glasgow, Lyon, Paris and so on. Even when normal service was resumed, all the aircraft and all the pilots were in the wrong place. There will be an inquiry; it will report within six weeks – a short time frame, always a sign that people are seriously narked. Lessons will be learnt.
But are we asking the right question? The question, as it is currently posed, is this: how can we ensure in future that we keep the airport running at capacity, even when faced with a rare adverse event? But I would rather ask: why is it, when we are obliged to have some time out, that we get so upset? Even a cursory examination of the status quo reveals that it is highly ridiculous. Let us suppose that Heathrow has a quiet time, if not exactly a curfew, during the wee small hours. Let us say that 1300 aircraft take off, and another 1300 land, during an 18 hour day. So there are about 72 takes-offs, and 72 landings, every hour, or one take-off, and one landing, every 50 seconds. In other words, given that there are 2 runways, there is yet another aircraft rolling down each runway, every 50 seconds, all day. And they want to build another runway, not to relieve congestion, but to increase capacity, and the aircraft numbers even further.
Madness.
One is reminded of an ancient music hall turn, in which a juggler sets about spinning plates on a series of poles, and then runs himself to exhaustion in order to refresh the angular momentum of each plate as its spin decays. The audience takes a kind of sadistic pleasure in watching the juggler attempt to reach each plate as it wobbles at a perilously lopsided angle. Not just aviation, but much of human activity resembles this madcap frenetic rush to keep the show on the road, in pursuit of the postmodern holy grails of “growth”, and “productivity”. Our hospitals run at 110% capacity. So do our prisons. Our GP practices are oversubscribed and run a fortnight behind time. Our hospital clinics run 18 weeks behind time, if we are lucky. Elective surgeries can be years in arrears. But fear not. Artificial Intelligence will sort it all out. International trade runs on a “just in time” basis such that, should a ship get stuck in the Suez Canal, fruit, meat and vegetables lie rotting on wharfs, all over the world. Our economy is like a marauding tiger wreaking havoc across the environment. We sit on its back holding on for dear life, in terror that if we fall off, we will be gobbled up.
I like airports, but I have never liked Heathrow. It is vast, faceless, and impersonal. It seems to emphasise the gap between rich and poor. The VIP lounges are invisible and unattainable. Policemen armed with submachine guns eye you coldly on terminal concourses.
By contrast, I’m very fond of Auckland, domestic and international. It lies to the south of the city, its lengthy single runway running more or less east to west. If you are coming in from the north or north west, as most of the traffic from Australia or Asia does, and if the local wind is a westerly, you reach top of descent roughly as you make landfall at Cape Reinga, bring back the power as you cross Kaipara Harbour, and level out on a downwind leg over the Waitemata Harbour to the east of the city, the iconic silhouette of Rangitoto on your port wing. Then a base leg over the sprawling southern city suburbs, to take up finals roughly abeam McLaughlins Mountain, one of Auckland’s 48 volcanoes. Then you track straight down Puhinui Road, the piano keys of runway 23 on your nose, the Manukau Harbour beyond, and Manukau Heads on the horizon. It must be one of the most beautiful approaches in the world.
The atmosphere in the Control Tower is one of calm. Most of the international traffic comes in in the early morning, and thereafter the airport is pretty quiet. I like to think that the Kiwis have got their priorities right. They are laid back, cheerful, self-sufficient, and resilient. They live in a very beautiful country, and they have a tremendous respect for the environment. In that respect, I am convinced that New Zealand culture is predominantly Maori.
Yet, although I still visit relatively frequently, I haven’t lived there for a quarter of a century, and I have a notion that in the interim, NZ has become a little more preoccupied with money, and its acquisition. House prices have sky-rocketed in Auckland, and the gap between rich and poor, once relatively narrow, has widened. It has become a little bit more like the rest of the world.
The last time I was there, I flew Emirates, Glasgow – Dubai – Auckland, in 2020. The leg from Dubai to Auckland is the longest passenger flight in the world, at 17 hours 15 minutes. I made the return journey, arriving home on March 8th, just as the whole world locked down.
Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe, and the second busiest in the world. The busiest airport in the world is Dubai, and as I transited through, I remember the interminable taxi from the terminal gate to the holding point, past the serried ranks of seemingly hundreds of Airbus A380s. I remember thinking, “We can’t go on like this.”
Back in Scotland, during the first wave of the pandemic, the skies overhead went silent, the roads were quiet, and all I could hear as I walked in my local area was birdsong. We all said that we must remember this golden silence, and that we mustn’t go back to our bad old ways.
Hah!
jamescalumcampbell 