British GP to be held at Donington

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by davyboy

I've just been down to see Bernie this morning with my brown paper envelope and he told me that I can have a Grand Prix in my back garden. I'm off up to Barnet council now to get some planning permission and I'll have Martin Brundle here at lunchtime with a few of his friends who did the tarmac work in Montreal to lay a track down. Unless it rains, we'll be ready by the end of the day today.

My friend Napolean thinks you are not treating this proposal with the seriousness it deserves and unless you start doing so, he's going to invade your garden and remove your Debris fencing, thereby rendering your track unsuitable for a GP.

[davyboy]

Peter, you may have identified a problem I hadn't thought about. Not to worry, Bernie told me that if I encountered any difficulties I should come back with another brown envelope and he'd fix it for me.

[old man]

Now let's see, we want 100,000 spectators but perhaps 30% can get there on bikes, have VIP access or some other way of not needing a car, that leaves 70,000 to come by bus from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester OK? Right then at say 50 persons per bus that is 1400 bus journeys from wherever you park your car and lets say every car has 3 people on average that is 23,333 cars extra to park in Nottingham, Derby or Leicester, good.

Oh, then you will have the bus journeys from the new station, say 10,000 people use that route, only 10 extra trains each day from London, no prob, that is another 200 bus journeys, simple

Right, that is the logistics sorted, now about that loan Mr Madoff

[Bodysnatcher]

Harvey has been telling me of his plans for the CVC / BCE memorial GP to be held round Bexleyheath. Herman T will turn Danson Road into "The Glorious Leader Straight"

any day now..

[Purist]

Ford Prefect, ANY major event (sport, concert, state fair, etc) will substantially inconvenience those in the surrounding area. Silverstone doesn't have anything approaching full accommodations or the transport network within its bounds, so NO, it is NOT self-contained; no major venue is.

When significant portions of downtown Wichita (a metro area of ~500,000) are shut down for roughly a week for River Festival, people and businesses cope and find ways to deal with it; so I think one airport is quite capable of doing likewise for three days.

And somehow NYC deals with NASCAR disrupting things for a few days each December.

[Guinness2702]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Who is going to compensate the airport for the loss of revenue, pay for the transportation of the diverted passengers and the wages of the staff who will not be working when they should?

Nobody, because they don't exist - the airport will make its revenue from the aircraft visiting the GP. The staff will work to service those aircraft, or temporarily at an alternate airport. There will be no diverted passengers - as there will be no bookings for that weekend - i.e. anybody who tries to book a trip to...say Alicante that particular weekend will simply be told that their choice of airports is say Gatwick, Luton, or Newcastle, instead of Gatwick, EMA or Newcastle. Unless they actually research it, they won't even know.

The main additional costs would be cargo and staff displacement, for which I'm sure a suitable compenasatory fee could be paid by the GP organisers

Originally Posted by Suze

Incorrect. Certainly where I work, whilst not public knowledge, they're around.

Okay, fair enough, but nobody's booked yet. I'm sure it is not beyond the airlines capability to do a bit of rescheduling.

Originally Posted by Suze

Do you know how difficult it is to change one small thing in airline's staff daily work?

No, but, for example, I work in an office normally. Today, for only the second time in 10 years, I had to go down into London to visit a customer's site and do what was otherwise a normal day's work there. I'll simply claim the cost of travel on expenses. Although a little inconvenient, it's hardly ruined my life.

Originally Posted by Suze

I would suspect not - as I said earlier, slots are extremely valuable things

Are you suggesting that there are no spare slots at any of the airports within radius of EMA, and that all of those airports operate at 100% capacity?

Once again: Should they decide to go ahead with this idea, it will not be easy, but by no means unachievable.

[Farbrooke]

Originally Posted by old man

Now let's see, we want 100,000 spectators but perhaps 30% can get there on bikes, have VIP access or some other way of not needing a car, that leaves 70,000 to come by bus from Nottingham, Derby, Leicester OK? Right then at say 50 persons per bus that is 1400 bus journeys from wherever you park your car and lets say every car has 3 people on average that is 23,333 cars extra to park in Nottingham, Derby or Leicester, good.

Oh, then you will have the bus journeys from the new station, say 10,000 people use that route, only 10 extra trains each day from London, no prob, that is another 200 bus journeys, simple

Right, that is the logistics sorted, now about that loan Mr Madoff

If my maths is up to much that means 533 buses - if you allow a three hour period to shift people and one hour per journey - can London handle 10 trains to Donington in three hours along side the normal delays.

[Suze]

Originally Posted by Guinness2702

No, but, for example, I work in an office normally. Today, for only the second time in 10 years, I had to go down into London to visit a customer's site and do what was otherwise a normal day's work there. I'll simply claim the cost of travel on expenses. Although a little inconvenient, it's hardly ruined my life.

Of course it wouldn't "ruin anybody's life" but as I said, it is EXTREMELY difficult to get anybody in aviation to agree to the smallest most meaningless change - for whatever reason, people seem to complain about anything and everything and then the unions get involved and strikes get threatened etc etc etc.....don't ask me why, that is one part of the aviation industry I fail to understand.

Are you suggesting that there are no spare slots at any of the airports within radius of EMA, and that all of those airports operate at 100% capacity?

Nope, never said there were no spare slots - but there may not be a lot. I don't know, I don't fly in or out of EMA, but I suggest a lack of available slots would be likely and a possibility.

Airlines and people are hard to please, as I said, it's not as simple as some may think, and certainly not as simple as you are trying to suggest. What, may I ask, are your thoughts based on....??

[stroller]

Originally Posted by Farbrooke

If my maths is up to much that means 533 buses - if you allow a three hour period to shift people and one hour per journey - can London handle 10 trains to Donington in three hours along side the normal delays.

Check out some of the "theoretical" figures here



http://tentenths.com/forum/showthrea...=111530&page=2

[Guinness2702]

Originally Posted by Suze

Airlines and people are hard to please, as I said, it's not as simple as some may think, and certainly not as simple as you are trying to suggest. What, may I ask, are your thoughts based on....??

Originally Posted by Guinness2702

No, as I said, it won't be easy and I'm sure it's not quite as simple as simply phoning up Luton and saying "can we land our plane please.", but it can be done.

Originally Posted by Guinness2702

Once again: Should they decide to go ahead with this idea, it will not be easy, but by no means unachievable.

As you can see, I certainly never said it would be simple. My thoughts are based on the fact that is plainly physically possible. I'll grant you that I'm unwilling to accept that air industry workers are so utterly stubborn/inflexible - in part at least because personally, I'd be ashamed if I told my employer I wasn't flexible on limited occasions (e.g. my aforementioned one-off 3-hour round-trip to a customer site today), without justification, and I wouldn't expect such an attitude to be conducive to furthering my career. It beggars belief that the entire air industry would think to themselves that such an attitude is good for them.

[Suze]

Well, for whatever reason, some people like to be difficult! I am sure there are plenty of stories on BBC News involving unions etc. If you ever get really bored, please feel free to come and visit a few crewrooms and you may understand better I've told my employer before I can't work on limited occasions [for example the phonecall last Friday of "please can you come in and work and nightstop on your days off".....] and we have to be very flexible - the way my working week has changed this week is a perfect example of that , going to work in Edinburgh for a month at 10 days notice another - but anything that requires planning / agreement in advance for whatever reason, seems to prove difficult! Don't ask me why, as I said, I fail to understand

[Suze]

ps, to prove a point, I'm about to leave for work and have just checked my roster just incase they've changed it - and since I checked at 10pm last night, my day has now changed.....so yep, have to be flexible

[ford prefect]

Originally Posted by Purist

Ford Prefect, ANY major event (sport, concert, state fair, etc) will substantially inconvenience those in the surrounding area. Silverstone doesn't have anything approaching full accommodations or the transport network within its bounds, so NO, it is NOT self-contained; no major venue is.

When significant portions of downtown Wichita (a metro area of ~500,000) are shut down for roughly a week for River Festival, people and businesses cope and find ways to deal with it; so I think one airport is quite capable of doing likewise for three days.

And somehow NYC deals with NASCAR disrupting things for a few days each December.

Purist:
I am not stupid, I have organised events of various capacities in professional venues allowing for 50000 attendees.

Your analogy of a River Festival is spurious to say the least, since the briefest of glances at the River Festival website show it to be a community festival in the town taking up rather a lot of space and therefore irrelevant to a motor race on a dedicated circuit.

We are discussing a sporting event in a dedicated venue with facilities on site to deal with eating, drinking, toilet, merchandising, ticketing, parking (or not in this case) and entertainment.

Silverstone is a self contained venue in the sense that no external business or event is negatively affected beyond a minor diversion on the roads.

Accommodation is different, although there are camping facilities.

I am sure that the staff at East Midlands Airport could shut down for a few days, it is well within their abilities.

My point remains: why disrupt perfectly independent businesses so we can watch a motor race.

NYC no doubt can deal with the disruption caused by NASCAR, the point is Why Should It?

[ford prefect]

I in correctly wrote "minor diversion"

Ok, it is a fairly major closure, but it doesn't require wholesale re calculation of the local airspace.

[old man]

We can forget any changes at EMA, that will simply not happen because of the disruption to all the slots at the airports served by the services to/from EMA and having the planes in the wrong place at the wrong time

[White flag man]

Why don't they just build a big ramp, like on an aircraft carrier, so that the planes can take off within a much shorter distance and the rest of the runway can be used for parking. There, problem solved.

[Guinness2702]

Originally Posted by White flag man

Why don't they just build a big ramp, like on an aircraft carrier, so that the planes can take off within a much shorter distance and the rest of the runway can be used for parking. There, problem solved.

No need, NASA are soon to sell off solid rocket boosters from the shuttle. All they need to do is strap a couple of those on for a bit of extra thrust - or better still, with the boosters, they could do away with the runway altogether and use some sort of elevating ramp (think Thunderbird 2), to allow near vertical take off!

[old man]

Really folks, you are not taking this seriously I think

[mark_l]

There will be no traffic problems, no accomodation problems and no problems with using the airport because there will be no GP at Donington.

Gillet should get his head out of the clouds and stop deluding himself and others into believing that the British GP will ever be held in 2010.

[johntt]

Originally Posted by mark_l

There will be no traffic problems, no accomodation problems and no problems with using the airport because there will be no GP at Donington.

Gillet should get his head out of the clouds and stop deluding himself and others into believing that the British GP will ever be held in 2010.

Sadly I think you may be right. Donington won't ready, Bernie won't go back to Silverstone and Bernie takes a big cheque from Kreplapistan for a Grand Prix where they bus in out of uniform policeman and soldiers to make the place look full...

[VIVA GT]

Last night I asked a very high up person in a local bus company if they'd had, (or heard of) any approaches from Donington regarding the park & ride scheme for the Grand Prix. He said he'd heard of nothing (and is well connected) which came as no surprise to me and further evidence of the fact that this is just not going to happen...

[adstubbs]

On the subject of East Midlands airport - worth noting that it's not just a passenger terminal. DHL have a large operation based there (I think it's their main airfreight hub for the UK), and asking them if they wouldn't mind diverting their flights to Birmingham or anywhere else is not feasible, as they have warehousing and road transport all set up at EMA. From what I've seen, the proposal is to reduce the normal airport activity during the GP, not the whole weekend, and to have chartered flights coming in for GP punters. Sounds like a fun job for someone.....

[Marbot]

There are indeed plans to shut down the EMA for the GP weekend !

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72539

[old man]

Not plans exactly, discussions, quite another thing

The intimation is that they will want lots of landing slots over the weekend and so bring the airport lots of business and a condition of that may be no flights during the race (why?). A lot different from closing it down which the Donington management surely have no right to do. Deal making going on here I think

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by old man

Not plans exactly, discussions, quite another thing

Well...yes.

Originally Posted by old man

and a condition of that may be no flights during the race (why?).

Radio interference!

RD: "Lewis you need to take on fuel and tyres in three laps time!"

Flight 4762: "Could you repeat that control;you want me to what!?"