CSeries out of London City Airport, Part 2. UPDATED 2017.01.24

By Bjorn Fehrm

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Introduction

This article, which was published on the 14 November, has been updated with new information from Bombardier. The range of the CS100 from London City airport has increased due to improved performance from the aircraft and a new engine version with more thrust, the PW1535G engine.

November 14, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: In the last article about operating the Bombardier (BBD) CS100 from London City Airport (LCY), we could see that the runway is about half the length of an international airport’s runways. This will have a significant impact on the Take Off Weight (TOW) that can be used when commencing a route from London City.

aerial_view_of_london_city_airport_2007

Figure 1. London City airport, housed in the docklands of London's east end. Source: Wikipedia.

The manufacturers have data in their aircraft brochures that state that one should be able to takeoff with e.g. the CS100 at Maximum Take Off Weight (MTOW) from a runway which is 1,463m/4,800ft long. London City Airport’s runway is 1,508m/4950ft long, so then things should be fine?

No, the figures from the OEMs is the planning figure for actual runway used and London City airports usable take-off Runway is given as 3,934ft. In addition there is 394ft stopping distance available.

To understand how this can be used required a bit of information that we did not have at the time of writing the original article. Some of the information we used was not up to date and we did not use the strongest engine available (PW1535G) when analyzing if an operator could fly direct between New York from London City.

Bombardier came to our help and we have now been able to update the data with which to feed our performance model. This shows among other things that it’s possible to operate a direct connection between London City airport and New York, given that the number of passengers (the payload) is restricted to around 50 passengers or below.

We have revisited the two cases, SWISS European operations from London City and how would a direct operation London-New York work. You find the updated article below.

Summary:

  • London City Airport puts special requirements on the aircraft serving it.
  • It puts stringent requirement for takeoff and approach/landing.
  • We use new information and our performance model to present what routes can be served with a CS100 from the London City Airport.

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