I get on the tarmac at Southampton Airport to see why 164m of new runway is a big deal

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• Mikeact says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:05

  Living on the South Coast, and not far from Southampton, just a few comments.
  We use it wherever possible, for most positive reasons given in the comments above, although Gatwick does have it’s advantages, particularly the train from down here. (Rhys, you mention Clapham Junction…can’t see that at all…might as well get off at Gatwick.)
  The other issue is pricing. I’ve written to SOU in the past, that because of higher fares, you’re persuading me to go to Gatwick or Heathrow. You also have to be careful of timings, if that’s important….one flight a day there and back can be problematic, twice we’ve had to have overnighters. KLM is a bit of a weird one over the years, ‘now you see us, now you don’t ‘. Used to be a useful connection to CDG, but dropped years ago, and now nothing to Paris. And my next flight to AMS shows it is operated by German Airways..who? All in all though, its not a bad regional airport, very friendly lot , and on balance, I guess more useful for leisure. Certainly the City Flyer weekend routes have been useful for a week or two away….again, looking at the prices?….A good use of Avios.

  • Mikeact says:

    22 Jan22 January 09:12

    Apologies, Paris was added again after pressure. And do check the fluctuations of destinations, coming and going. It used to be difficult to keep up with SOU.

    • Mikeact says:

      22 Jan22 January 09:53

      Paris ORY is direct, but most international connections are CDG. You need to get there ? Of course, via AMS from SOU.

  • CamFlyer says:

    22 Jan22 January 09:24

    German Airways is a wet lease operator; they were running flights for ITA for a while. Perfectly fine.

    Iirc, the SOU-CDG flights were formerly run by Flybe, which explains why they disappeared.

    • Mikeact says:

      22 Jan22 January 09:56

      Before that KL/AF…which was fine for my office over there at the time.

  • dave says:

    22 Jan22 January 09:36

    I thought the additional KLM flight might finally make it a good option for connections to the far east but the timings still mean you end up with an overnight at a stopover.

    Living down in Bournemouth, Gatwick is just as painful to get to as airports north of London so I often look at Southampton as a connecting flight from there would be quicker than getting to Gatwick.

    • Richie says:

      22 Jan22 January 09:49

      KLM today has flights SOU-AMS at 17:20 and AMS-SIN at 21:10, some good connections on certain days.

  • jjoohhnn says:

    22 Jan22 January 14:18

    Most of these are complaints for the airlines rather than the airport itself. The airport can’t set the timings of flights – they obviously have capacity so aren’t constrained around that. Also fares are largely down to airlines.

    Perhaps though that the airport has done their bit – with the longer runway allowing aircraft, the fares may be able to come down as some of the operating costs can be apportioned over a larger number of passengers (e.g. flight crew). If airlines choose to use larger planes of course.

• MrMcBurger says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:16

  You should go see what BRS is like now it is busier. The terminal cant cope. Lucky to get and finish a drink if you rock up 2hrs before a flight at peak hour. Forget getting into a lounge. Taken over by that holiday firm who gives lounge access away with certain bookings

• David S says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:29

  Another advantage of using SOU is that all the fast Cross Country network trains stop there. You can get to SOU on one train from places like Birmingham, Manchester, York and loads more places

• David S says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:31

  There are hotels there as well. There is at least a Premier Inn but think unlike many others it has no AC. This was pre pandemic

• Richie says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:33

  easyJet has ordered more A321s to upgauge from A320s at slot restricted airports. SOU airport just has to then attract easyJet to set up a base with some of the displaced A320s.

• Jacqueline says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:49

  I live in Somerset and find it frustrating that our nearest biggie (Bristol) doesn’t offer BA flights so I welcome the use of Southampton. Can anyone tell me what the parking is like / costs? And do people use it for connecting flights for longhaul. My concern would be cancellations. Flights to Jersey used to be notorious for this because of fog.

  • Martin says:

    22 Jan22 January 23:33

    There is a lot of free street parking just 1 or 2 stops away in Southampton as most of Southampton on one side has free parking..
    Southampton football fans park just over the bridge and walk to St Mary’s stadium for example.
    Plus there is a train station there.

• PeteM says:

  22 Jan22 January 09:51

  Good to see the BAA signage lives on! 🙂

  • Martin says:

    22 Jan22 January 18:09

    Glasgow still has the occasional sign lurking in the airport equivalent of Rail Alphabet.

• Seagull says:

  22 Jan22 January 10:07

  Zebra Crossing!!! If you’re going to write a piece about the runway at least do 5 mins research to get the terminology correct. The white lines are called Threshold Markings and generally mark the beginning of the runway that is available for landing. Interestingly they also tell you how wide the runway is:

  4 stripes = 60 feet
  6 stripes = 75 feet
  8 stripes = 100 feet
  12 stripes = 150 feet
  16 stripes = 200 feet

  • ukpolak says:

    22 Jan22 January 10:23

    Interestingly re runway width, I had read somewhere that this was unfortunately a constraint at SOU which prevented anything bigger than a 757 from operating there. Anything larger would need a wider runway to accommodate (ie nothing to do with length).

  • Rob says:

    22 Jan22 January 10:46

    If we need to look up a term then its fair to say our readers won’t know what it means either and so we don’t use it. Same reason we ban airport codes and J/F terminology from articles.

  • kevin says:

    22 Jan22 January 11:12

    Thanks @Seagull, I didn’t know that. LHR and DUB have 12. Cue Google Earth to see where has 16……

    I took Rhys’ Zebra crossing thing as a bit of light hearted humour!

    • Andrew. says:

      22 Jan22 January 15:27

      Benson has 16. I’m slightly surprised that Prestwick doesn’t.

      • Seagull says:

        22 Jan22 January 16:48

        Nice example is Anchorage (huge cargo hub) as 25L has 16 and 25R adjacent to it has 12.

  • JAXBA says:

    22 Jan22 January 16:51

    Haha, came to the comments for the zebra crossing reaction too. I’ve heard of them as ‘keys’ as in a piano, and ‘crossing the keys’ in the flare on final approach when landing.

    Useful factoid about width, ty!

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