London City Airport Research Articles

Association between short-term NOx exposure and asthma exacerbations in East London: A time series regression model

BackgroundThere is strong interest in the relationship between short-term air pollution exposure and human health. Most studies in this field focus on serious health effects such as death or hospital admission, but air pollution exposure affects many people with less severe impacts such as exacerbations of respiratory conditions. MethodWe developed a time series regression model to quantify the relationship between daily NOx concentration and asthma exacerbations requiring oral steroids from primary care settings. Explanatory variables include daily NOx concentration measurements extracted from 8 available background and roadside monitoring stations in east London, and daily ambient temperature extracted for London City Airport, located in east London. Lags of NOx concentrations up to 21 days (3 weeks) were used in the model. ResultResults of the time series modelling showed a significant relationship between NOx concentrations on each day and the number of oral steroid courses prescribed in the following three weeks. Atmospheric concentrations of NOx measured at roadside stations are a more effective indicator of future prescriptions of oral steroid courses than are measurements at background stations. This relationship has two main components, one during the first week and the other towards the end of the second week. We find that an increase of 1 μgm−3 in atmospheric concentration of NOx (mean 95.75 μgm−3) leads to an increase of about 2.7% in the mean of 30.9 prescriptions of oral steroid courses per day in the study area. There is a negative correlation between ambient temperature and asthma exacerbation, with a reduction of 1C∘ leading to an increase of about 1.4% in the mean number of prescriptions per day. We did not find any effects of daily precipitation or relative humidity additional to annual seasonal ones.

Toward Baggage-Free Airport Terminals: A Case Study of London City Airport

Nowadays, the aviation industry pays more attention to emission reduction toward the net-zero carbon goals. However, the volume of global passengers and baggage is exponentially increasing, which leads to challenges for sustainable airports. A baggage-free airport terminal is considered a potential solution in solving this issue. Removing the baggage operation away from the passenger terminals will reduce workload for airport operators and promote passengers to use public transport to airport terminals. As a result, it will bring a significant impact on energy and the environment, leading to a reduction of fuel consumption and mitigation of carbon emission. This paper studies a baggage collection network design problem using vehicle routing strategies and augmented reality for baggage-free airport terminals. We use a spreadsheet solver tool, based on the integration of the modified Clark and Wright savings heuristic and density-based clustering algorithm, for optimizing the location of logistic hubs and planning the vehicle routes for baggage collection. This tool is applied for the case study at London City Airport to analyze the impacts of the strategies on carbon emission quantitatively. The result indicates that the proposed baggage collection network can significantly reduce 290.10 tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

London City becomes first major airport to be fully remote-controlled [news - briefing

A digital control tower has been built at London City Airport, allowing flights to be fully guided to take-off and landing by remote controllers. Air traffic controllers normally sit in a tower with panoramic windows overlooking the airport runway. However, this digital control tower allows the London Docklands-based airport to be managed from approximately 80 miles away in an office block in Swanwick, Hampshire. In future, more airports could adapt remote air traffic control, so London City's new set-up will be watched with interest.

The role of the media in staging air pollution: The controversy on extreme air pollution along Oxford Street and other debates on poor air quality in London

Mapping the media frames that have both triggered and articulated the mobilisation around air pollution in London in the period 1997–2017, this paper shows how especially those events that have been framed in agonistic terms have led to a rise of media engagement with the topic. From the controversy around Sahara dust as a so-called ‘natural’ explanation for smog episodes, to the staging of Oxford Street as the most polluted street of the world, from Sadiq Khan's decision to join ClientEarth in its court case against the UK government to the debate on a new runway for Heathrow, from the Volkswagen scandal to the Black Lives Matter blockade of London City Airport: the discursive construction of us/them divides has been crucial in sparking passion, contestation and debate. Empirically, the paper starts from a detailed study of 1594 newspaper articles that appeared on air pollution in five British newspapers, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Times, between January 1997 and March 2017. Theoretically, it combines Chantal Mouffe’s political theory with Anabela Carvalho’s media theory, in particular her diachronic model of circuits of culture. On this basis, the paper distinguishes five critical discourse periods and shows how a number of critical discourse moments, exactly because of their agonising dimension, have been able to spike media attention and shift the terms of the debate. Starting from this observation, the paper argues that media processes should not only be understood in cyclic terms, but can also trigger non-linear iterative dynamics, leading to upward spirals characterised by thresholds and a gradually increasing level of interest overall, in this case raising the profile of London’s poor air.

Air quality affected by trees in real street canyons: The case of Marylebone neighbourhood in central London

This paper discusses the combined influence of building morphology and trees on air pollutant concentrations in the Marylebone neighbourhood (central London). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed with OpenFOAM using the k-ε model. Aerodynamic and deposition effects of Platanus acerifolia trees are considered. While aerodynamic effects are treated as typically done in the literature, i.e. as a porous media, for the deposition an enhanced model with an additional sink term was implemented. CFD results are compared with UK AURN (Automatic Urban and Rural Network) station concentrations. Several meteorological conditions are analysed based on London City Airport weather station data, with attention to prevailing winds.CFD simulations show that trees trap air pollution by up to about 7% at the Marylebone monitoring station in the spring, autumn and summer seasons, suggesting that the aerodynamic effects are similar over the different leaf seasons. Aerodynamic effects are more important at lower wind speeds causing little turbulent dispersion. Deposition effects are found to be 4 times less important with reductions of up to about 2%, with more deposition in summer due to a greater leaf area density. Furthermore, for winds parallel to Marylebone Road, the aerodynamic effects decrease concentrations suggesting that in such cases trees could be considered as a mitigation measures. This is different from perpendicular winds for which trees exacerbate trapping, as found in previous studies. The analysis of concentration levels obtained from CFD simulations across the whole street confirms a beneficial aerodynamic dispersive effect of trees of 0.7% in summer time for all wind directions averaged at a wind speed of 5m/s (yearly average wind speed observed in the area). Results highlight the need to account for both aerodynamic and dispersion effects of trees in CFD modelling to achieve a comprehensive evaluation and help city planners with a sustainable design of trees in urban environments.

Measuring the customer’s journey through London City Airport

London City Airport (LCY) is the only London airport actually in London, handling around 70,000 flight movements and 3.65 million passengers in 2014. It is a niche business, in that some 65% of those using LCY are travelling on business and 63% are inbound, having bought their ticket at the other end of the route. Airports don’t have a God-given right to the passengers and airlines they serve. Fifty-nine per cent of airports with four million or fewer passengers in Europe are loss making — in fact, 44% of all airports in Europe are loss making (up 4% in two years). Every airport offers passengers access to air travel — but is this really enough to guarantee survival? Understanding, communicating and delivering on your airport’s passenger proposition is crucial to your success. It is all you have to make you stand out from the crowd. You must protect it at all costs. LCY has developed a passenger proposition based on four pillars — location, network, customer service and, most importantly, speed of transit. It should take no more than 20 minutes to get from front door to departure lounge, and no more than 15 minutes from tarmac to train. We call it the 20:15 promise — and it is a promise that presents an obvious challenge: how can we know if we were delivering?

Risk Perceptions and Trust Following the 2010 and 2011 Icelandic Volcanic Ash Crises

Eruptions at the Icelandic volcanoes of Eyjafjallajökull (2010) and Grimsvötn (2011) produced plumes of ash posing hazards to air traffic over northern Europe. In imposing restrictions on air traffic, regulators needed to balance the dangers of accidents or aircraft damage against the cost and inconvenience to travelers and industry. Two surveys examined how members of the public viewed the necessity of the imposed restrictions and their trust in different agencies as estimators of the level of risk. Study 1 was conducted with 213 British citizens (112 males, 101 females), who completed questionnaires while waiting for flights at London City Airport during May 2012. Study 2 involved an online survey of 301 Icelandic citizens (172 males, 127 females, 2 undeclared gender) during April 2012. In both samples, there was general support for the air traffic restrictions, especially among those who gave higher estimates of the likelihood of an air accident or mishap having otherwise happened. However, in both countries, the (minority of) respondents who had personally experienced travel disruption were less convinced that these restrictions were all necessary. Scientists, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and (in Iceland) the Icelandic Department of Civil Protection were all highly trusted, and seen as erring on the side of caution in their risk estimates. Airlines were seen as more likely to underestimate any risk. We conclude that perceptions of the balance between risk and caution in judgments under uncertainty are influenced by one's own motives and those attributed to others.

Who Rides Airport Railways?

A new methodology is proposed for postproject analysis of airport railways for guidance in planning airport ground access. The concept is to determine the type of rail passenger (air passenger or employee, business or leisure, and resident or nonresident) by comparison of hourly rail ridership, air passenger volumes, air traffic movements, and geographic location of trip ends. A test is proposed for each possible ridership group to determine who is using the railway. A case study of London City Airport is used to illustrate the value of the method with Oyster smartcard ridership data from Transport for London. Findings confirm that the impressive 51% Docklands Light Railway mode share for air passengers from small sample surveys is realistic: the railway connection is predominantly used by air passengers and not employees. The airport characteristics—predominantly business travelers, relatively central location, and local employees—simplify the analysis. Geographical information system analysis revealed one major surprise: the busiest station by trip ends is Woolwich Arsenal in southeast London. However, the general findings are as expected: trip ends concentrate in the financial and business districts. The policy recommendation for future airport railway projects is to apply this methodology to a range of comparable airports. This will aid transport planners in designing a rail service optimized for the groups most likely to use the railway.

London City Airport deploys facial recognition for queue measurement

London City Airport deploys facial recognition for queue measurement

Air link: building London's elevated light-rail extension

The Docklands Light Railway in London has been extended to London City Airport, providing an essential public transport connection between the airport and the London Underground rail network. This paper describes the design and construction of the challenging 4·4 km, twin-track extension— two-thirds of which had to be built above congested urban space on a viaduct—and its four new stations. The viaduct typically consists of post-tensioned concrete segments with span lengths of up to 37 m, with three longer spans being built using the balanced-cantilever method.

Surviving the low-cost carrier challenge: London City Airport's business model

Surviving the low-cost carrier challenge: London City Airport's business model

London City Airport

A brief history and chronology of London City Airport open this Paper, which covers work done over more than ten years. The layout of the airport, as in use 1987-91 is described, followed by a detailed exposition of how this initial layout was derived and gained planning permission and other necessary approvals. The design and construction of the airport in 1986-87 is next explained, with sections covering the runway, the drainage, the unusual apron structure, the passenger terminal and the navaids and ground lighting. The Paper then turns to the developed airport with its extended runway, addressing first the characteristics of the aircraft that would operate from it. In the urban location obstacle clearance on both take off and landing was a key issue and this is considered in some detail. The resulting layout of the developed airport is described along with the acoustic considerations in its operation. Some information on the costs of construction, and means of access to and from the airport, concludes the Paper.