There must be a better way to do this, as anyone who has stood in the transfer zone at London Heathrow on a summer bank holiday and seen the departures board cycle through delays while the terminal fills over its comfortable maximum has undoubtedly thought. There is for an increasing number of British tourists. It also has nothing to do with Heathrow.
When you consider what is actually happening to the alternative, the reasons why Britain’s rural airports are doing better than most industry estimates even three years ago become clear. Heathrow’s operating ceiling is almost reached. The airport’s two runways serve one of the world’s busiest aviation corridors, and it takes hours to recover from any mishap, whether it be a technical problem, a ground delay, or bad weather at one of the airports it connects to. There isn’t the schedule tolerance necessary for recuperation. There is not enough room for flexibility at the airport.
Some of the demand that a less restricted Heathrow might have been able to meet has been absorbed by Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bristol. Each has been growing its network of direct routes, frequently in collaboration with easyJet and other airlines who have deliberately moved beyond their conventional bases in Gatwick and Luton. A trip to London, a hub connection, and the related time expense and delay risk are no longer factors for a traveler in Edinburgh who wishes to take a flight to Amsterdam or Barcelona. From Edinburgh, they can take a direct flight. They arrive on the other side without the particular fatigue that comes with a Heathrow transit, the trip begins much closer to home, and the terminal processes them in a fraction of the time.
One of regional airports’ underappreciated competitive advantages is the terminal experience. The physical experience of security at Heathrow Terminal 5 during peak hours differs from that of security at Manchester or Bristol on a normal morning. There is a shorter line. The gate is nearer. In general, the coffee is the same, but you can do something else with the forty minutes you haven’t spent in line. The time difference is a real and quantifiable factor when choosing an airport, especially for business travelers who fly frequently enough that the cumulative friction of major hub transit has become genuinely costly.
Alongside the convenience reason, there is an economic case for regional airports. Spending on cabs, parking, lodging, and airport merchandise occurs in the Bristol economy rather than in West London when a traveler departs from Bristol rather than Heathrow. Similar to how it would have if the visitor had arrived in the country via London and spent their first night close to Heathrow, the tourism spending in the location arrives through several distribution routes. Successful regional airports are one of the few strategies that genuinely yield tangible outcomes for the government’s long-standing but unevenly implemented goal of expanding economic activity outside of the southeast of England.
The progress of the Heathrow third runway project will determine whether this trajectory continues. A third runway at Heathrow would significantly increase the hub’s capacity and alter the competitive landscape for smaller airports. It is approved in theory but hotly debated on environmental and community grounds. Some travelers who currently choose Edinburgh or Manchester for convenience may change their minds if Heathrow becomes significantly less crowded. Regardless of what the capacity statistics indicates, it’s feasible that once travelers experience the difference between a morning at a rural airport and one at Heathrow, the preference remains persistent.
