In last place was Polish airline LOT

Heathrow airlines ranked by noise for first time


bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24829340]

Maybe why they are expensive

I've always found LOT to be on par with other airlines as far as cost is concerned. Even cheaper in some instances. For example, I flew one way from Los Angeles to Krakow (via Chicago and Warsaw) on 8/31 and it was $850. When I booked the flight at the end of June I checked all the online travel sites and this was the cheapest. Lufthansa wanted $3,000 !

If you check the LOT wiki page, there is nothing out of the ordinary in the fleet. If they are indeed so noisy, then perhaps the blame should be placed on Boeing and Embraer?

tinyurl/y638s2

As is typical with the BBC article, nothing about the criteria is mentioned. I did check the link to the British Medical Journal and while the study is full of facts and figures, there is nothing breaking down the nitty gritty details. Could it be that LOT has more night time flights into and out of Heathrow? Could it be a certain flight path? Without these details it's impossible to say. Seems very convenient that BA and Virgin were ranked number one and two though for the quietest airlines. I think this study was somehow biased to the British airlines.

It's mostly to do with the age of their fleet. They have those new Boeings (the ones that don't work very well) but those aren't on their Heathrow routes.

No its as Jon says

Guys, check the wiki article I provided a link to. The LOT fleet is not that old. The oldest plane they operate is a Boeing 737-400 from 1993 and the Embraer models are dated 2004, 2006 and 2011. There's something really fishy about this. Without knowing the specifics of the flights, I really find it hard to believe.

I wonder what you think is 'fishy'. There's no reason that LOT in particular should be at the top of the noise league in an independent test unless that's what the results came out as.

Nothing fishy, just facts as recorded. Why on earth should there be something fishy about it. The Cold War is over. I believe there was a LOT flight over Heathrow that was involved in a near miss because the pilots couldn't speak English well enough.

uk-airport-news.info/heathrow-airport-news-120608e.htm

I've certainly never been on a LOT Embraer when flying LOT to Heathrow. Prague yes, Budapest yes, domestic flights yes, Germany yes, Heathrow never.


They aren't; they are quite a bit cheaper than BA. We're taking LOT to Heathrow next February: 1,497zl for three of us; BA on the same days and close to the same times would be 837zl per person.

A lot depends on what, when, how. I think we had this discussion before when you bought those tickets (which are indeed good value). I fly a lot (no pun intended) and always check LOT first. On the routes I need, they're occasionally cheaper but nearly always more expensive - sometimes drastically so. They're good for long haul though and generous with upgrades.

I just had a look for flights four weeks from now, to LHR on Friday 7 Dec and back to WAW on Monday 9 Dec: LOT is 785zl, BA 866zl.

Check this out. BA 168 gbp, LOT 188 gbp.

Momondo, 23 Nov 30 Nov

Ant63, it has nothing to do with the Cold War. But don't you find it all a bit "suspcious" that Heathrow names BA and Virgin the top quietest airlines flying into the airport?

I had not heard of that LOT incident at LHR, so I turned to my go to source... airliners.net

This is what was discussed at the time:

airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4023153/

Not in the slightest. Firstly the BA/Virgin results are for short haul only - for long haul they're both in mid-table, secondly there's no connection between any of those companies and thirdly there's no reason to suspect the testing was anything other than rigorously honest.

For the record, it looks like the two areas that let LOT down are Continuous Descent Violations and that their aircraft are not Chapter 4 compliant (the link below explains those terms - they were new to me too). It looks like those are measurable criteria. So nothing suspicious.

heathrowairport.com/static/Heathrow_Noise/Downloads/PDF/fly_quiet_q3_2013.pdf

Thanks for the link jon357. Interesting read.

The London-Warsaw flight uses their oldest (and noisiest) aircraft, the Boeing 737-400.


The 787 is certainly quieter but flies long haul to the USA.

I must say the 787 is a lovely plane even in economy class. My LOT flight from Chicago to Warsaw on 8/31 - 9/1 was wonderful. My only complaint was that the flight attendants were too grumpy.

787 has a lot of reliability problems, some airlines are not impressed and its done Boeings reputation a lot of damage.

I'm not going to fly on it for a few years, let everyone else be a guinea pig.

This has been totally blown out of proportion by the media. When the Ethiopian Airlines 787 caught fire at Heathrow earlier this year, the coverage on Sky was unbelievable. You would have thought the plane had crashed and everyone on board was killed.

If you want to see the successful Dreamliner flights, look here...

flighttracker.newairplane.com

There have been an incredible number of technical issues with the 787. The media have not blown it out of proportion, they have vastly under reported the issues.

The dispatch rate of the 787 is very bad. Here's a discussion of the latest issues with the 787.

airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5872167/

Part of these issues have been caused by the customers themselves. Norwegian in particular seem to have got it completely wrong - they put the 787 into heavy usage as one of the first customers, then were surprised by problems occurring. Boeing aren't blameless, of course.

Thats one opinion. However the Norwegian issue is with one of their aircraft, not the other and they are still having serious problem even though Boeing have put it in intensive care when they threatened to return it for a refund.

You buy a brand new aircraft you expect it to work as promised, not require a team of 15 Boeing engineers battling every day to get it into the air. Many other airlines are having multiple issues, such as ANA (second biggest 787 operator)

None of this is a surprise, the innovative all electric systems (So much new technology in the 787, its never been done before.) were predicted to be unreliable, and the first 60 had to be extensively re-worked after assembly (think custom rebuild specific for each aircraft). Hundred of thousand fixes for each one after it left the assembly line.

ANA have 23 aircraft with 5 on standby...

It's pretty much a direct consequence of the Boeing culture - I still can't figure out what on earth the management are doing in Chicago when everything is built in Seattle.

I still think it will be a great plane when they sort themselves out, but they seem absolutely unable to actually do this. Did you read about the whole nonsense with Norwegian and BoeingCare not being what it was supposed to be?