[transtraxman]

….and the Pan Am 747s.

[AisleSeatTraveller]

and everyone’s noisy favourite Condcorde

[AnthonyDunn]

Dan-Dare’s Comet 4s, the TWA Convair 880s and what about a show of those Ilyushin Il-62s and Tupolev Tu-154s in Aeroflot livery… The latter were loud enough to shake your teeth loose if you were anywhere near their flight path.

[MrMichael]

Strange, nobody ever complained about Concorde going over.

To add to the list, old B737/100s of Sabena were pretty noisy, could outdo on the noise front a Pan Am 747 on occasions. As I recall the first plane that surprised me with its lack of a racket was when BA bought 757’s I think in around 1985. They also got a few of those 737,300’s I think (with the squashed engine) they were pretty quiet flying for BA, but oddly were in Air 2000 colours.

[canucklad]

How daft of me to forget Concorde, even dafter of me to forget the Russian planes…….

I remember going back to YVR, transiting Schiphol onto a DC-8 63 and being bemused by the odd looking aircraft at the gate next to us. Perplexed might be a better word, as the nose cone was transparent and you could see the pilot’s feet, if memory serves me right.
All very John Le Carre as the Tupolev 134 Interflug full of sinister spies was parked next to our free orange plane, how a little boys imagination runs wild !

[AnthonyDunn]

@canucklad – 02/12/2015 10:37 GMT

Well, from my time in MoDUK, recalling that we ensured all potentially “interesting” radio transmissions were switched off whenever Aeroflot or any other Warsaw Pact aircraft was scheduled to pass through UK airspace. We always assumed that it wasn’t just prying eyes in the nose that they were carrying.

[JohnHarper]

During the end of our time in Windsor Mrs JH and I were agreed that the worst regular offender was the 772. compared to some of our earlier memories it was quiet but things have improved no end and I agree, when you move to an area where there is an airport, don’t complain.

I love the story of the people at Gunwharf Quays, a more pretentious and nasty place I have yet to see.

[EruditeSheep]

And now for a curved ball…..

Some time ago, whilst sitting wide awake in an overseas hotel at 3am due to the effect of jet-lag, I thought I would run an exercise on the lines of –
if I had a clean sheet, where would I build a new airport for London and the South-east?

My thinking ran on the lines of generating a scheme that would exploit as far as possible existing road and rail networks, while maximising benefit to centres of population in the south-east, including London. So, armed with Google Earth, I started looking…

My initial ideas were based on exploiting the very large existing airfield at RAF Lyneham, which the RAF no longer required. Close to the M4, it was sadly too far from London to make it a feasible option. So I started looking for real-estate sites further east and found an excellent site with a sufficiently large footprint to allow the building of an airport big enough to rival Amsterdam. This lay just north of the M4 and south of the fast GWR railway line between the villages of Shurlock Row and Waltham St Lawrence. Indeed there was already an existing grass-strip at White Waltham just to the east, so local people would be familiar with the noise encountered with aircraft movements. In comparison with the complexity of building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, this would be an easy site to develop and should be very attractive in relation to the problems of developing the Heathrow site any further.

With existing fast road and rail links to London it would certainly rival Amsterdam and with such good connectivity would significantly benefit the large centres of population to the west of London (eg Reading, Oxford, Swindon, Bristol etc).

Whilst the arguments in support of such a scheme were compelling I must admit that I only considered the physical and economic factors, but forgot about the politics……..!

[SimonS1]

Breathe easy everyone. Looks like another 6 months delay.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35027559

Needless to say another review into the environmentals appears to be looming. Jobs for the boys no doubt.

[MrDarwin]

The grass grows longest in west London….

[canucklad]

Prove once again, that our politicians are gutless rhetoric seeking manyana mongers !

[TheLion]

@canucklad
“Our politicians are gutless rhetoric seeking manyana mongers” Brilliant, LOVE IT!

Wow though. A 6 month delay in the Heathrow decision! SIX MONTHS!

This government is truly hapless 🙁

The article even mentions they may ban staff from driving to work for environmental concerns. How’s that gonna play out, with thousands of staff having no other transport option in the small hours after public transport is finished…

The environment matters to me, but this is just a severe case of myopia. Wouldn’t it be better to build better, more integrated transport links. Maybe even a car drop off point outside the airport, with light rail lines taking passengers to the terminals.

[SimonS1]

@EruditeSheep – must say re-reading your last post I found it quite amusing. Particularly the logic that people living near to White Waltham grass aerodrome must be used to the noise of light aircraft so could have no grievance if an international airport the size of Amsterdam was built on their doorstep??

[BRin1406]

I think the name Nero linked to fiddle springs to mind.

[JasPat1]

Said this before and i’ll say it again. Our travel industry will go the way that shipbuilding and the coal industry went unless we man up and take the decision.

I live under the flight path near Heathrow, have worked in the travel industry for 29 years and regard our politicians as hapless. Get on with it. Amsterdam has the permission for their 7th runway. And allow scheduled flights into and out of Northolt. …..

[Author]

Posts