Discussion
Except, once again, the M4,M3 corridor has developed due to the location of the UK's hub airport.
Expanding elsewhere will be an expensive fudge. I've met numerous aviation professionals from all spheres of the industry who say the same. The reason it hasn't happened before now is noise. Well aircraft are quieter, RNP navigation can accurately dictate where those aircraft will fly. Steeper approaches, up to 3.2 degrees, are possible. The 'it's too noisy' argument is not what it was and now it needs politicians to be brave.
IMHO in 20 years Heathrow will be a feeder airport for AMS, FRA, CDG and MAD.
Expanding elsewhere will be an expensive fudge. I've met numerous aviation professionals from all spheres of the industry who say the same. The reason it hasn't happened before now is noise. Well aircraft are quieter, RNP navigation can accurately dictate where those aircraft will fly. Steeper approaches, up to 3.2 degrees, are possible. The 'it's too noisy' argument is not what it was and now it needs politicians to be brave.
IMHO in 20 years Heathrow will be a feeder airport for AMS, FRA, CDG and MAD.
bad company said:
MarshPhantom said:
The M25 is a problem. For people coming from the west it could add a good 2 hrs or more to their journey compared with Heathrow.
True but Heathrow would surely still be there serving as you say those from the West.Wherever the airport goes it will be difficult for some people. Stansted just seems to offer the best solution by far.
All I can see is, move it and you p
s off all those that have access to LHR now and put up with the noise that is nothing new and as said probably wont increase much. Plus you ps off all the people in Kent that will then get noise they didn't have before when they brought their houses. Edited by ViperDave on Saturday 20th July 12:50
If they were to build a new airport on Grain the M25 around Dartford would need to be massively improved from what it is now. It can't cope with the current load it has to deal with!
The bit that really bugs me about this is that we aren't allowed to consider the actual answer to this - runway 2 at Gatwick - until 2017.
There's room down there, and the transport links are in place. There's no reason why Heathrow needs to be bigger - if the two alliances could be made to agree to have one at Heathrow and one at a two runway Gatwick there would be plenty of room for all.
There's room down there, and the transport links are in place. There's no reason why Heathrow needs to be bigger - if the two alliances could be made to agree to have one at Heathrow and one at a two runway Gatwick there would be plenty of room for all.
nonuts said:
Some interesting points, just out of interest, those saying Heathrow is in the wrong place, where do you live?.
That is key as the big problem with 'Boris' island is that it is the wrong side of London for the millions of people who live away from London and need access to the main 'hub' airport. It is not just the immediate surrounds that have grown up around Heathrow, but an 'M4 Corridor' heading west. Too many are having a London centric view of this debate when the key point is where to place a hub airport for the country as a whole. From that perspective Heathrow is the ideal location with good road links to the rest of the country while still being as good as either Gatwick or Stanstead for Londoners.nonuts said:
My opinion is that the only sensible option is to sort out Heathrow, and why not go for both the north west and south west options they've put forward (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23337754) now and stop fking about. Heathrow is in the best place out of all the major airports from what I can see. It's right between the M3 / M4 on the M25 for roads and has good links into and out of town. Maybe the only thing they'd need to sort out is making sure that the train linking Heathrow to Paddington is as fast as is possible.
To the people moaning about the fact they fly over London, that's the best bit of any night flight when they're coming in on approach over the city.
The Economist has an interesting idea. Scrap the existing runways and build 4 new ones due west of where they are. That way you have a proper hub airport AND reduce noise in urban areas. king about. Heathrow is in the best place out of all the major airports from what I can see. It's right between the M3 / M4 on the M25 for roads and has good links into and out of town. Maybe the only thing they'd need to sort out is making sure that the train linking Heathrow to Paddington is as fast as is possible.To the people moaning about the fact they fly over London, that's the best bit of any night flight when they're coming in on approach over the city.
davepoth said:
The bit that really bugs me about this is that we aren't allowed to consider the actual answer to this - runway 2 at Gatwick - until 2017.
There's room down there, and the transport links are in place. There's no reason why Heathrow needs to be bigger - if the two alliances could be made to agree to have one at Heathrow and one at a two runway Gatwick there would be plenty of room for all.
2019 for Gatwick, not 2017 There's room down there, and the transport links are in place. There's no reason why Heathrow needs to be bigger - if the two alliances could be made to agree to have one at Heathrow and one at a two runway Gatwick there would be plenty of room for all.
Answer me this if you please. Why is it, when slots become free at LHR, do airlines at LGW leave there and rush for LHR?
About the only way another runway at Gatwick would help the UK as a whole would be if it became LHR south and was linked to LHR north by a high-speed direct rail link, preferably airside and free so that you could fly in to LGW and fly out of LHR 1.5 hours later, maybe even let you check in for a flight from one at the other and use the train like you do to get to another terminal. If only they were owned by the same company doh...
All another runway at LGW will achieve is relieve the pressure off the one they have for holiday flights. Without the easy connections its useless as a hub airport and we would just end up with two regional airports fighting each other whilst the main US-EMEA traffic goes to Europe. Give it 4 runways and some proper terminals and it could take on LHR but its already an ass to get to for the M3,M4,M40 crowed even if it would be better than darkest Kent.
All another runway at LGW will achieve is relieve the pressure off the one they have for holiday flights. Without the easy connections its useless as a hub airport and we would just end up with two regional airports fighting each other whilst the main US-EMEA traffic goes to Europe. Give it 4 runways and some proper terminals and it could take on LHR but its already an ass to get to for the M3,M4,M40 crowed even if it would be better than darkest Kent.
ViperDave said:
About the only way another runway at Gatwick would help the UK as a whole would be if it became LHR south and was linked to LHR north by a high-speed direct rail link, preferably airside and free so that you could fly in to LGW and fly out of LHR 1.5 hours later, maybe even let you check in for a flight from one at the other and use the train like you do to get to another terminal. If only they were owned by the same company doh...
Even if they were both owned by BAA it wouldn't help, as they are the worst possible company for the job unless you like being corralled through endless fking shops to get to the fking gate; all their airports are prize-winningly ste, I flew out of Naples a while ago and was disappointed to discover it's a BAA airport and it sucked almost as badly as LHR, complete with the obligatory funnelling of everyone that passes through security into the fags/booze/perfume shop. Was it this bad when they were state-owned? I'm too young to remember.I like the air-side train link idea though.
Well Gatwick have now submitted their plans for a second Runway as well.
One thing that I'm struggling with is the cost of the investments, I assume they include new Terminals etc but Heathrow's is costed at £15bn+, Gatwick's at £5-8bn, BAA when sold to Ferrovial in 2006 etc was valued at £10.1bn that included Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and more... They recently sold Gatwick for just £1.5bn, THEY offloaded ten percent of the smaller BAA for around €600 million.
Obviously there are all sorts of complicating factors but it seems like an airport is worth considerably less than the sum of it's parts
One thing that I'm struggling with is the cost of the investments, I assume they include new Terminals etc but Heathrow's is costed at £15bn+, Gatwick's at £5-8bn, BAA when sold to Ferrovial in 2006 etc was valued at £10.1bn that included Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and more... They recently sold Gatwick for just £1.5bn, THEY offloaded ten percent of the smaller BAA for around €600 million.
Obviously there are all sorts of complicating factors but it seems like an airport is worth considerably less than the sum of it's parts
Magog said:
Well Gatwick have now submitted their plans for a second Runway as well.
One thing that I'm struggling with is the cost of the investments, I assume they include new Terminals etc but Heathrow's is costed at £15bn+, Gatwick's at £5-8bn, BAA when sold to Ferrovial in 2006 etc was valued at £10.1bn that included Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and more... They recently sold Gatwick for just £1.5bn, THEY offloaded ten percent of the smaller BAA for around €600 million.
Obviously there are all sorts of complicating factors but it seems like an airport is worth considerably less than the sum of it's parts
BAA sold to Ferrovial at the top of the market in 2006. BAA (Ferrovial) were forced to sell Gatwick by the CAA at the bottom of the market at the worst of the banking crash. BAA reckon they took a hit of 1/2 to 1 bn sterling (at least) by not being able to defer that sale to a better point in the market.One thing that I'm struggling with is the cost of the investments, I assume they include new Terminals etc but Heathrow's is costed at £15bn+, Gatwick's at £5-8bn, BAA when sold to Ferrovial in 2006 etc was valued at £10.1bn that included Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and more... They recently sold Gatwick for just £1.5bn, THEY offloaded ten percent of the smaller BAA for around €600 million.
Obviously there are all sorts of complicating factors but it seems like an airport is worth considerably less than the sum of it's parts
People really need to take a long look at how the air transport business works and why, as has been said earlier, airlines pay far over book for landing slots at LHR. I work at Heathrow in BAA's development arm so I have a personnel interest in this debate.
As a business schedule airlines barely make profit, and certainly make a loss on each pax flying on a single leg journey in economy - and we know what happend to British Leyland when they managed their business like that. It is only transfers traffic that makes each point to point journey finanically viable for an airline and intercontiental transers pax have many options. These are not just western european airports but the new hubs in the middle east. Airlines simply will not service new destintations in the BRICs countries from the UK if they cannot attract the transfers traffic, to do that the hub needs to be highly efficient. LHR's minimum connect time for transfers pax is 45 minutes, which is limited by meeting the FAA / Homeland security standards for baggage; adding an hour's travel time from one airport to another will destroy the UK as an airline hub and we will not get the flights to BRICs we need. Regardless of where it is, air transport business economics and the passenger market forces dictate that we need a single airport as the Hub, where ever we put it.
It is a fact of life that the economic centre of gravity for the UK is to the west side of London, from the square mile to the Thames Valley, as is the population c.o.g. Obviously this is because the global corporations wanted easiest possible access to LHR but if we were to be communist about it for a moment, where would we now build a hub airport if we were starting from scratch? From a build / land cost and noise impact point of view this would be in the Thames estuary but that is to ignore the economic & populations pull west. LGR, STN and any scheme Boris is championing today are all too far east to service this pull & we are left with building our hub somewhere west of London. The UK simply can't afford a new hub airport, whereever it is. We don't have the money nor do we have the will to pay the taxes to fund it. As Sherlock says eliminting the impossible leaves you with the solution as improbable as it may be. LHR has its faults and if we were starting again we wouldn't start from here but the only realistic & real world answer is to expand it further.
Boris Island 
Problems, at the moment there is only one 'major' road in and out
of the area, a dual carriageway part of the way, normal two way
the remainder. Gets very congested during rush as it is.
To 'widen' this road means house, farms, villages and garages being
destroyed, moved or redesigned.
Main problems are going to be bird strikes (Large gathering of geese)
and an area prone to fog.
See pic below as to another problem. The River Thames is tidal which
in laymans language means it moves/flows at a fair rate of knots.
If and when this airport is built the water when the tide comes in will
be pushed to the North shore, Canvey Island is there, and they have a
problem with possible flooding on Spring Tides as it is With the water
being deflected towards them how long before Canvey Island gets flooded
and possibly washed away.
In pic Green shows deflected water, Red is Canvey.
Problems, at the moment there is only one 'major' road in and out
of the area, a dual carriageway part of the way, normal two way
the remainder. Gets very congested during rush as it is.
To 'widen' this road means house, farms, villages and garages being
destroyed, moved or redesigned.
Main problems are going to be bird strikes (Large gathering of geese)
and an area prone to fog.
See pic below as to another problem. The River Thames is tidal which
in laymans language means it moves/flows at a fair rate of knots.
If and when this airport is built the water when the tide comes in will
be pushed to the North shore, Canvey Island is there, and they have a
problem with possible flooding on Spring Tides as it is With the water
being deflected towards them how long before Canvey Island gets flooded
and possibly washed away.
In pic Green shows deflected water, Red is Canvey.
Best solution, which has been mentioned a couple of times, would a be a hyper rial link, 10-15 minutes LGW-LHR is easily achievable with maybe an extension to LTN (and maybe beyond- could HSx rail share infrastructure?) and could be built for a fraction of the cost/timeframe/inconvenience/whinging nimbyism of building or expanding a new hub anywhere. It'd need some level of redundancy in either ultra reliable trains or multiple tracks, none of this wrong type of leaves on the lines BS.
- If 4 or 5 runways are spread across multiple locations this would be a great operational advantage in poor weather/emergencies/terrorist incidents etc.
- Heathrow could be the super-hub, a lot of the domestic flights would be shunted off to luton
- You'd be able to park/commute to whichever airport is closest and hypertrain across to the right runway, reducing traffic and the need to improve M25 and other roads.
The Don of Croy said:
Croydon Aerodrome is the answer. Easy access to the A23 and just down the road from the cosmopolitan nirvana that is Thornton Heath.
My charge for this consultation excercise is £125million. Cash only, no amex.
As long as it keeps the commoners away from Biggin Hill then carry on, there's a good chap.My charge for this consultation excercise is £125million. Cash only, no amex.
hairyben said:
Best solution, which has been mentioned a couple of times, would a be a hyper rial link, 10-15 minutes LGW-LHR is easily achievable with maybe an extension to LTN (and maybe beyond- could HSx rail share infrastructure?) and could be built for a fraction of the cost/timeframe/inconvenience/whinging nimbyism of building or expanding a new hub anywhere. It'd need some level of redundancy in either ultra reliable trains or multiple tracks, none of this wrong type of leaves on the lines BS.
The cost of the rail project you're suggesting would probably be similar to, or at least the lions share of, the £50bn cost that's currently being touted around for Boris Island.- If 4 or 5 runways are spread across multiple locations this would be a great operational advantage in poor weather/emergencies/terrorist incidents etc.
- Heathrow could be the super-hub, a lot of the domestic flights would be shunted off to luton
- You'd be able to park/commute to whichever airport is closest and hypertrain across to the right runway, reducing traffic and the need to improve M25 and other roads.
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