[SimonS1]

All seems to have gone very quiet now – is anything still proposed?

It looks like airports all around the world from Africa to Middle East to Asia are growing to support their economies while there is no obvious strategy.

Gatwick also seems to be close to capacity but expansion seems to have settled down to just use of the emergency runway as a parallel and that is still stuck in the planning stage.

Presumably all good for London Luton, London Stansted, London Southend, what next, London Manston comes back, London Ipswich?

[Inquisitive]

I know I may get some harsh comments for this post, but still…

Before Brexit, UK economy was doing pretty good – a most sensible investment would have been to build grassroot airport at Tames estuary. That would have generated huge employment, boosted economic activities and could have sustained UK’s leading position among European countries. That was discussed many times, but nothing happened.

IMO, Brexit was a completely foolish decision and there are limited possibilities of improvement of UK economy.

Without any bright economic future, any major investment in airport – Heathrow or elsewhere – will be impossible to recover. Even Heathrow 3rd runway may not be viable any more.

At the most 2nd runway at Gatwick with fast train links with Heathrow could be a reasonable investment.

[AndrewinHK]

Not sure how Brexit is relevant to this… I do think British politics in general stymies development. I’ve always been of the opinion that infrastructure products that are decided on, should be protected from political meddling and legal challenges. If a project is greenlit it should be ring fenced and untouchable. LHR expansion just get on with it, London broadly i would argue has the best airport system globally, in terms of choice and geographic spread of the airports it’s pretty fantastic, having a super hub comparable to the other global hubs is less needed, that being said LHR has proven itself to be an efficient run operation for maximising the limited resources it has, and the government should acknowledge the need for London to have the capacity needed for the future, and LHR has gone through all the legal rigmarole already, time to just get it done.

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Malcolm, fqtvgla, transtraxman, BackOfThePlane

[BackOfThePlane]

I feel that the 3rd runway at Heathrow should go ahead (by the time it potentially opens I believe there will have been significant progress in ‘greening’ both aviation and the economy in general) but, alas, I think the chances of that now happening are not far off zero.

[transtraxman]

The expansion to a new airport in the Thames estuary was a no-go from the outset. The studies done in the 70s, 80s and 90s all came out against it, and bird migrating habits have not changed in the last 50 years.
One thing which is never mentioned is the noise levels. People assume that being a long way away then a new airport would not affect them. That is false. Anybody who lives near water knows that noise carries over water, particularly at night – so goodbye to night operations.
Then another point usually overlooked is the interference to Belgian and Dutch air traffic control Limiting the operations not least at Schiphol because of having to redraw the landing/take off paths with the opening of London Estuary airport. It certainly is politically not-on.

The plans for expansion at Gatwick and Heathrow should be done in two stages. 1-New runways at both airports. The runway taxiway at Gatwick should be maintained for emergencies. A new runway has land reserved for it south of the present main runway. Go ahead and build the runway. The third runway at LHR as drawn out in the airport´s plan is far too ambitious. Something simpler within the present boundaries with fewer taxiways could be quite adequate. That also means the airport can be placed further East to take advantage of the connecting rail lines into the airport.

2 – the building of new terminals (the new one could be T1 at LHR) can be done at a later stage at both airports when the present ones are saturated. The planners should take advantage of the opportunity to make all the connections from the aircraft to the terminals via airbridges.

3 – the landing patterns could then be reorganised so that at LHR the southern runway takes all the landing and take off traffic for T4. The(new) northern runway would be dedicated to all the airlines occupying T1. That leaves (principally) use of the central runway for the occupiers of T2 and T3, although some flights might have to be routed along the southern runway as well. By doing this you can eliminate a great deal of traffic within the airport, especially where it concerns moving to/from T4 to the central runway.

Careful planning can make possible more efficient use of the airport with a great saving in pollution and noise. All it needs is political will and some out-of-the-box thinking. The public can be won over by the right arguments and honest straight forward explanations showing the net benefits.

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fqtvgla, pdwtrip, BackOfThePlane

[BackOfThePlane]

@transtraxman – I agree with pretty much everything you say. Unfortunately, the decision on this won’t be determined by sensible discussion of the facts. It will come down to politics, soundbites and entrenched ideologies.

5 users thanked author for this post.

fqtvgla, pdwtrip, transtraxman, cwoodward, BPP

[SimonS1]

I’m not convinced by the Brexit angle either. Of course it will have caused a short term hiccup to growth, but the UK economy will resume growing at some point and therefore capacity will be needed bearing in mind the infrastructure is at capacity and slots are changing hands for millions. We should be looking at what capacity is needed in 2040, not next year.

These projects take years to deliver, so I would have thought taking decisions now would be the best bet.

Of course politics doesn’t help, as all politicians make short term decisions based on popularity and self preservation rather than any serious regard for the long term needs of the country.

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Jacob, fqtvgla, transtraxman

[Author]

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