TABLE OF CONTENTS Ian Botham, the former England test cricketer, in a television interview once declared Heathrow to be the best airport in the world , adding quickly as an after-thought, on the way in! But as a UK resident Botham is unlikely ever to want to change planes there. Passengers making transfer connections might describe it in somewhat less complimentary terms.
One of the most important factors in the competition for connecting passengers is transfer quality, a factor embracing not just the interval of time required to change from one aircraft to another but also the simplicity and convenience of the connections process. Here single-airport, single-terminal systems operating some way below full capacity (e.g. Amsterdam) are at a distinct advantage. London however, is a multi-airport, multi-terminal system now heavily congested.
Minimum connecting times (MCTs) for a selected number of airports are shown in Table 5.4. These refer to the minimum interval that must elapse between an arrival and a departure in order for a passenger to book a connection. Their length clearly depends on a number of factors. At busy congested airports (e.g. New York) the MCTs are longer than at places where the pressure on facilities is relatively less (e.g. at some of the smaller airports in the United States, where online connections can in some cases be made in as short a time as 10 minutes). Connections to/from long haul flights often require greater MCTs, because of longer loading and unloading times. Where the linkage is between...
