“Welcome to Heathrow T6. Your suite will be ready in 10 minutes.”
What a failure of vision the announcement of the UK government’s go ahead for Heathrow expansion is. Brown’s government has added another item to the list of lamentable directives, all notable by their inspirational paucity and shallowness of intelligent insight. Not that Cameron’s side is much better - starting with Boris’s vision of a Venice like Thames Estuary airport with waves lapping gently outside as passengers board the next generation of eco-jets. The best thing that can be said of Boris’s plan is that if Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger ever needs to ditch a plane again at least there will be a nearby river to do it in. Don’t hit the Thames Barrier on the way in Ches’.
The decision to expand has been positioned as one that is necessary if the UK is to remain competitive within Europe, and globally. So sayeth the Chairman of the IoD, so sayeth the airline CEOs, not to mention the ever impartial BAA. Baroness Valentine of Putney, who took the unprecedented step of pausing as she reloaded her shotgun in between shooting foxes to comment “In the current economic turmoil, one mustn’t forget that if the UK is to face darn increasingly fierce global competition – if London’s access to world markets is to remain one of its unique selling points – the capital will need the best international connections. We simply mustn’t allow upstart economies such France and Germany to fly more aeroplanes than we do. The British Bulldog must be given its wings!”
And what an unnecessarily black and white view that is, simply because it ignores the possibility that we may, if we just try hard enough, manage to uncouple economic stability from the need to fly. What might such a vision look like?
There are basically two types of airline traveller - business and holidayer. OK, there are also people travelling for funerals, to participate in sporting events, or emigrating. There might even be the occasional asylum seeker who is either flying to the UK to spend some time getting to know the BNP (sorry Immigration Department) process for asylum seekers, or having already enjoyed the BNP’s hospitality perhaps flying back to the welcoming African regime from which they fled. It might even be the case that some of those failed asylum seekers might be flying back for repatriation to whatever tiny, remaining square of dry land we still call Bangladesh.
Of course the projected increase in passenger numbers that is used to justify the need for expansion includes the increased holidaying crowds, however Baroness Val appears a little dismissive of the economic benefits of 10 million more Aussie backpackers and Chinese holiday makers, which is odd really. It is worth remembering that outbound English holidayers are a net economic drain on the UK, taking as they do all their hard saved pounds and pissing them up the wall of some Ibiza nightclub. Every pound spent in Eurozone or in the US is a pound not flowing back into the UK economy. Indeed, if we are primarily worried about benefiting the UK economy then we’d be better off charging all those wannabe UK holiday flyers the fully loaded ticket cost, including a carbon and environmental tax reflective of the true environment footprint of their flight, with a view to encouraging them to holiday instead within the UK’s borders. Gap year students who have nothing better to do than backpack through India (no really….they truly have nothing better to do as there are no graduate jobs for them) might instead be encouraged to walk through Slough and Chalvey buying English samosas instead of Indian ones. Immediately, that will free up seats on both outbound and inbound flights for more foreign holiday makers to come here. More camera wielding Japanese gleefully pumping Yen back into the Putney High Street as they pose in front of a boarded up Woolworths snapping retro photos that celebrate England’s passed glory. A result for the IoD and Baroness Val - a net economic benefit to England and the beginnings of the traveller carrying the economic burden of the environmental footprint of jet travel.
Meanwhile let us remind ourselves that is the business traveller whom the airlines all find the most profitable to cater for. Not for them £10 seats and a bag of peanuts an optional extra. For the business traveller has the fantastically profitable habit of planning travel relatively late, and thus paying full price for the dubious joy of flying to New York, Hong Kong or Moscow to take part in a High Powered Executive Thinkfest. However as they too are charged the full environmental cost of flying, they’ll suddenly decide that those business meetings in New York sit a little more uncomfortable on the balance sheet. The already significant economic argument for avoiding optional staff travel will gain a whole new lustre.
Already, companies that have deployed high end video conferencing technology (”telepresence” as it is known) as a way of conducting effective executive meetings, with a range of international participants are reporting significant savings as a result of avoided staff airline travel. One company this author has spoken to has reported a saving in the region of $40 million, in return for a $4 million dollar investment in telepresence suite solutions. The use of such solutions is not without challenges of course. Telepresence suites are not cheap, and of course you need one for every location to which you wish to communicate. A reasonable alternative to each business having their own suites however is for a network to be established that can be shared by many businesses. And therein lies the failure of vision from the Brown government, and their wannabe Cameron alternatives.
Heathrow T6 could be so much more simply because it could represent the future of international and intranational business communications. By all means, build all the high speed rail you want. By all means, build all the bus and rail links in between London and Heathrow so as to encourage the use of public transport to and from rather than use of personal cars. T6 however, ought to a Telepresence Hub, not an additional runway. Business travellers, already used to the idea of heading out to Heathrow anyway, could find awaiting them not a baggage hall of lost luggage and the demeaning exercise that is full body scanning in your socks. Instead upon arriving and checking in a highly trained Telesteward could shepherd business people to waiting lounges where they may avail themselves of the facilities and prepare for their discussions, and then ensures that they can find their assigned suite and can start and conduct their meeting with success.
Bold thinking is required if we are navigate our way through the challenges we face from climate change. Heathrow expansion as announced has the boldness and vision of a wet tissue, locking us in to the status quo as it does. Ecoplanes are merely ecoplans on Boeing’s and Airbus’s drawing boards, and should only be a meaningful factor in our planning when they are a proven sight in our skies. Meanwhile, it is time for us to look differently at both the needs of the business traveller, and the meaning of “a transport hub suitable for the 21st century businessperson”. In the 21st century, effective ideas do not need an additional runway to have wings.
Tags: Heathrow, Telepresence, Travel