ANDREW HAINES, CEO of the Civil Aviation Authority since 2009, has an extensive background in railway management. He compared and contrasted the two industries in an address to the Railway Study Forum of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport
Aviation is really big business, adding around £39 billion in value to the British economy annually, compared with £10 billion by rail. Similarly, aviation employs 691,000 people in the UK, more than three times the 216,000 in the railway industry. This is reflected in taxation payments to HM Treasury, totalling £15 billion from air, in comparison with £4 billion from rail.
But it is not all one-sided. There are 1.7 billion rail passenger journeys made annually, against 134 million passengers by air, although the average journey lengths are rather different. Rail carries 2.2 billion tonnes of freight, while UK airlines carry 1.1 billion tonnes.
There are 64 licenced aerodromes in the UK with a total of 99 physical runways. These include those which are on grass or beach, as well as paved. That can be compared with 2,560 National Rail stations in Britain and a total of 16,500km of track.
CHARACTERISTICS OF RAILWAYS
Irrespective of one’s views on the priv…
