Leeds Bradford Airport gets approval for new terminal

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• TimM says:

  23 Mar23 March 07:39

  No proposal for a rail connection to LBA is missed opportunity to say the least. I am one of those who lives in the LBA ‘catchment area’ but, having done it by car once, would never consider using it when MAN has direct train connections right into the terminal. The proposals for LBA look misguided.

  • DarrenS says:

    23 Mar23 March 07:48

    Agreed TimM. I live in East Leeds and it is much easier to get a direct train from Garforth to Manchester.

  • Ryan says:

    23 Mar23 March 08:27

    https://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/articles/plans-ps42m-leeds-bradford-airport-parkway-station-open-public-feedback

  • Stagger Lee says:

    23 Mar23 March 10:28

    Also worth mentioning that they did plan to build a link road to the airport but that was scrapped at the end of 2019.

  • the_real_a says:

    23 Mar23 March 13:04

    The bus from the train station is very long from memory. Returning from long haul on a connection the last thing you need is a 45 minute bus journey just to get to the train. Also the bus didn’t accept cards and was forced to exchange £20 in the airport car-park change machine! This was fairly recent.

• Ryan says:

  23 Mar23 March 07:41

  There are plans for a new ‘airport parkway’ station to serve the new LBA terminal.

  https://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/articles/plans-ps42m-leeds-bradford-airport-parkway-station-open-public-feedback

  • DarrenS says:

    23 Mar23 March 07:45

    Unfortunately the station is in the wrong place. A bit like the airport really.

    • Ryan says:

      23 Mar23 March 08:23

      Agreed that the airport isn’t in an ideal location, but I think a new £40 million station (albeit with a short bus connection) can be classed as an upgrade to rail infrastructure.

  • Craig says:

    23 Mar23 March 08:37

    It would end up being a bit like East Midlands parkway with not that many people using it.

    • ADS says:

      23 Mar23 March 12:49

      And even before covid, the bus service between EMA Parkway and the airport had been abandoned … so the train station was even more pointless

      what a shame

  • barnaby100 says:

    23 Mar23 March 08:50

    To go from Harrogate via the new station would be longer than to go as currently on the bus due to the station location- nowhere near the airport and several times longer than driving yourself.

  • kitten says:

    23 Mar23 March 10:37

    Luton Airport is only just recovering now from that error.

    They’d be better building a
    transport link that goes all the way to the airport first.

    The way that Luton Airport did it just said upfront “this is a cheap and nasty experience” even if you didn’t know already Luton Airport is a cheap and nasty experience.

    • Rob says:

      23 Mar23 March 11:12

      Not much Luton could do, to be fair, given that the rail line was already there. As a high speed mainline I doubt you could have stuck in a tight bend to divert it to the front door.

      • Ryan says:

        23 Mar23 March 11:52

        And the new £225 million light rail link from Luton Parkway to the terminal may make the experience less ‘cheap and nasty’.
        https://dart.llal.org.uk/

      • kitten says:

        23 Mar23 March 12:23

        what I mean Rob is Luton built that stupid Parkway station. Which still requires everybody to get off the train at Parkway with luggage, grannies, pushchairs and assorted stuffed animal toys, schlep everything up and down a lift or escalator with one or both of them not working on many occasions (then you had the concrete stairs to schlep all that lot up and then down).

        Then manhandle all that lot through mostly narrow electronic barriers out of the station. Where you waited on the windswept pavement for a rattly shuttle bus with almost no seats and not very good arrangements for luggage to have everyone schlep all their stuff on then off the bus 6min later at the terminal.

        Luton was shamefaced enough about this for many years that they made the bus connection free. As in “Yup we know we cheaped out not building the railway through to the terminal”.

        To add insult to injury though, in more recent years they started charging for the bus at £2.50 probably more now.

        A cheap and nasty experience at Luton Airport was clearly heralded by this fiasco.

        They are finally now extending the rail line directly to the terminal and high time too.

        • ADS says:

          23 Mar23 March 12:47

          if you think the 6 minute bus journey represents price gouging (which I agree it is) … they still haven’t announced pricing for the transit link

          I fear the 40p a minute bus journey will look cheap by comparison

        • ChrisC says:

          23 Mar23 March 13:07

          The rail line isn’t being extended. It would be far too expensive to divert the line let alone build a new station at the airport because of the geography.

          They have almost finished building a £200m separate people mover tram system between the station and the airport.

          There is a good fly-through video in this ‘Ian Visits’ blog post

          https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2021/02/24/flythrough-of-luton-airports-new-automated-cable-railway/

  • TimM says:

    23 Mar23 March 10:53

    Ryan, thank you for the link. I have contributed to the public consultation in no uncertain terms. ‘Wrong line’, ‘wrong place’ and ‘vanity project’ may have been mentioned. UK politicians tend to lag best practice in public transport by at least 30 years. It is horrible to observe and experience.

• Sandra says:

  23 Mar23 March 08:45

  Living towards the East coast for KLM, which is really LB’s long haul option now there’s no BA, I can fly from Humberside more easily and if I’m going to get a train it’s easier to get on a train that is direct to straight into Manchester airport with no changes and definitely no bus. Even driving to Manchester is easier than driving to LBA.

  • DarrenS says:

    23 Mar23 March 10:16

    I would say that as a Leeds resident who travels mainly for business (well, used to) the only thing that LBA has really got going for it is the early flight to AMS.

    • Ryan says:

      23 Mar23 March 10:23

      Presumably the aim of the expansion is to attract more carriers and thus give greater destination options?

      • Stagger Lee says:

        23 Mar23 March 13:24

        LBA for european leisure flights is great and Jet 2 are by far the best low cost carrier I’ve used in recent years.

        Although the only airline where I’ve had to endure being struck by lightning twice within the space of a 3 minutes while on take off from Pisa airport. That was not what you would call a fun journey!!!!

        • BL says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:09

          What has made Jet2 so appealing as an LCC? I haven’t flown them before but they’ve popped up as an option before; hence, genuinely curious.

• Ben Jones says:

  23 Mar23 March 09:17

  Have BA confirmed that they’re dropping LBA then? I hoped it was a COVID loss only. It’s been a pain having to rent a car and drive up from Heathrow rather than the short flight.

  • Sandra says:

    23 Mar23 March 09:45

    It is supposedly a Covid suspension as far as I am still aware but given their ‘re-evaluations’ of routes I’m not sure they will come back. They’d already reduced their flight schedule a couple of years before Covid hit.

    • Stagger Lee says:

      23 Mar23 March 10:26

      Indeed they had. Living in North Leeds it was a great way to get to Heathrow for onwards connctions. Sadly they hacked back the flights meaning weekday connections became tricky to make and weekend ones almost impossible

      One time they cancelled my return connecting flight and move it to manchester. Which was Ok apart from the fact the indian call centre tried to insist on me paying extra to swtch the outgoing flight from LBA to Manchester. That was a fun hour sorting that out.

    • Dubious says:

      24 Mar24 March 06:49

      I thought part of the reasons for Heathrow – Leeds, Heathrow – Newcastle and Heathrow – Inverness services were Heathrow Third Runway related. There were some arguments that a third runway would increase capacity enough to enable more domestic services; BA (who are anti-3R) then tried to demonstrate you didn’t need a Third Runway for such domestic services to exist.
      I am assuming that if the third runway is delayed there is less incentive to keep those domestic flights, particurlarly if they are thin on yield.

• Prins Polo says:

  23 Mar23 March 11:52

  Hyatt doesn’t charge resort fees on redemptions either.

  More generally, resort fees are a complete scam but unlikely to go away as they have become part of life in the US. They’re often insane ($100 at the Ritz Carlton Dorado in PR…?).

  • Russ says:

    23 Mar23 March 12:52

    True that, I’d forgotten about Hyatt.

• Russ says:

  23 Mar23 March 12:50

  The premium economy article is interesting and I’ve spoken to few people who feel they’ve ‘arrived’ travelling in these seats. Appears they’re an aspirational seat for those who regularly fly in economy rather than a threat to business class revenue which will no doubt be a relief to airlines. Be interesting to know the split between PE customers paying cash and those paying with points.

• Richie says:

  23 Mar23 March 13:01

  Will Delta introduce PE to align with Virgin?

• mutley says:

  23 Mar23 March 16:50

  If it hasn’t already been mentioned, Both LTN and LBA are airports at significant elevation for the UK at 160M and 210m respectively, and also high up relative to the existing rail infrastructure. To make the LBA proposal stack up, they really need a decent twice daily service to LHR given that Leeds is the fourth largest Metro area in the UK after London Birmingham and Manchester.

  • Stagger Lee says:

    23 Mar23 March 18:05

    They had that decent service but got rid of it a couple of years ago

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    23 Mar23 March 18:30

    But surely Leed’s problem is the proximity to Manchester. You could make an argument that BA are better operating a good service to MAN on the expectation that this will pull in some Leeds catchment rather than divide the offering and serve neither particularly well.

  • Bagoly says:

    23 Mar23 March 18:33

    I knew Leeds was the highest, but I had not thought of Luton as being (comparatively) high.
    Could be relevant if the Greenland ice cap melts.
    When I wondered about Scotland being more ready for that recently I realised that all the airports there are by the coast and so pretty low.
    Although that doesn’t stop Newquay being surprisingly high (next behind Luton?)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.