Boris Island

[hidetheelephants]

109er said:

One thing that really annoys me is the people who live 'under' the flight path at
Heathrow complain about the noise.(Just been on the news again)

FOR GODS SAKE, its been open for 64 years (1946) IF they don't like the noise
WHY THE HELL DID THEY MOVE THERE in the first place?????

For the same reason as the morons who move next to racing circuits, farms, and any other endevour that people like to moan about; 'ooh it's noisy/smelly/dangerous and Jacinta doesn't like it'. It's because they are morons.

[hairyben]

109er said:

One thing that really annoys me is the people who live 'under' the flight path at
Heathrow complain about the noise.(Just been on the news again)

FOR GODS SAKE, its been open for 64 years (1946) IF they don't like the noise
WHY THE HELL DID THEY MOVE THERE in the first place?????

I have a little sympathy for the (very small minority of) people who've lived there 40 years and have experienced the full increase. Not much but a little, then again you live in a managed metropolis and sometimes that means compromise and things you don't like being done.

Rest of 'em though, right, so you bought a house next to the busiest airport in the world, and now you're crying cos you don't like airplane noise? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you're a fool. fk off.

Problem is with the lab/con convergence all squabbling over marginal seats and facsimile ideas these fools get listened to.

[JagLover]

loafer123 said:

JagLover said:

Boris is doing his job in defending the interests of Londoners, as he sees it.

Boris island is not in the best interests of the country.

I really don't get this - with Crossrail, HS1 and HS2, fast links to an estuary hub for travellers are already either built or being built. Heathrow is hardly a dream to get to at the best of times, after all and only the western home counties would really see an effect, and then only when driving - public transport access would be fast, modern and interconnected with the Estuary Hub.

I grant you that by public transport, assuming a high speed link is built, then it is little different whether it is in Heathrow or Boris island. But by car Heathrow is far better situated for the majority of the UK population.

[bad company]

MX7 said:

Why would you fly to Stansted instead of Heathrow?

Because you can get into the City in a fraction of the time.

[LHRFlightman]

bad company said:

Because you can get into the City in a fraction of the time.

If it's that urgent you'll fly to LCY. When it's not fogged in that is.

[valiant]

hidetheelephants said:

Kansai airport took 7 years from tipping the first load of infill to landing the first plane. Chek Lap Kok took 7 years from first tip to first landing as well. In both cases further construction dragged on for a while afterwards and there were remedial works for subsidence, but it all went fairly smoothly considering.

Right, now add our planning processes and see how long it will take.

If the government said tomorrow that Boris Island was the preferred choice and will be built it would 10 years before a shovel hit the dirt.


This decision was always going to be Heathrow. It was just politically expedient to knock it into the long grass for a few years.

[bad company]

LHRFlightman said:

bad company said:

Because you can get into the City in a fraction of the time.

If it's that urgent you'll fly to LCY. When it's not fogged in that is.

Not many flights into LCY from anywhere further than Europe.

Also you have not answered my question on WHY Stansted cannot be a successful hub airport like LHR given its better location and communication links to London, East Anglia and the Midlands.

[LHRFlightman]

bad company said:

Not many flights into LCY from anywhere further than Europe.

Also you have not answered my question on WHY Stansted cannot be a successful hub airport like LHR given its better location and communication links to London, East Anglia and the Midlands.

JFK springs to mind.

Anyway, look at where many of the top companies have their headquarters. M4 corridor. Now you tell me, why would they want to fly from STN when LHR is 20 minutes away?

Heathrow Express is 15 mins to Paddington. Stansted Express is 47 mins to Liverpool St. Now remind me again, which airport has the better comms links to London?

[bad company]

LHRFlightman said:

JFK springs to mind.

Anyway, look at where many of the top companies have their headquarters. M4 corridor. Now you tell me, why would they want to fly from STN when LHR is 20 minutes away?

Heathrow Express is 15 mins to Paddington. Stansted Express is 47 mins to Liverpool St. Now remind me again, which airport has the better comms links to London?

The answer to your question is clearly Stansted. The 47 minutes to Liverpool Street can easily be upgraded as can the M11 AND there is far more business done in the City of London than Paddington.

[MX7]

bad company said:

Because you can get into the City in a fraction of the time.

Why would you do that if your connection flight leaves from Heathrow? I'm not even it's true anyway. From Stansted you go to Liverpool Street, and you are a couple of miles away from the city. How long does it take to travel from Heathrow to the city? It would be just as long, if not longer, and if you're really in a hurry you'd fly to City if you departed from Europe.

If you're flying to London I don't think there's too much difference between Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted. While I understand that a central hub would be preferable if you have an outgoing flight to make, I guess that there are many people coming here to visit the UK. It's irrelevant where they land.

I still question the value of being Europe's international hub. It seems to me that other countries are far more suited to it, given the land they have available. I honestly know very little about it, but it just feels like a vanity project to me. Is it more than a holding bay where Costa Coffee and Mcdonald's ply their trade? I've done a few stop-overs, and I didn't recognise any significant benefit to the airports.

I also think that the benefits may be overstated. I find it hard to believe that the UK is going to lose significant business because it may take 10 minutes extra to get from Gatwick to London, and given that it will cost far more than is presently predicted, and if " The extra runway could be worth up to £30bn to the entire country over 60 years", which I actually think is very doubtful, and given that the return needs to be spread over 60 years, it's actually quite insignificant compared to estimated cost to building it when you've multiplied it by whatever number the contractors dream up.

My feeling is that the money would be far better spent, if the government are that keen to spend, on multiple smaller transport projects. Links from regional ports and stations. It'll spread the wealth more evenly, which I think may be one of the government motivations, and could be far more cost effective than putting it all on red.

My other concern is who pays for this? Heathrow will profit, but that's a private company. Are they really going to stump up all the cash?

Does anyone here have any experience of losing business because someone couldn't get a flight? I think it's a myth, much like the myth that Manchester will prosper because it'll take 30 minutes, or whatever, less time to get from London to Manchester on HS2. If they need to be there by 10:00, all it means is that they can catch a train that leaves 30 minutes later.

I really so zero value in this.

[MX7]

LHRFlightman said:

Heathrow Express is 15 mins to Paddington. Stansted Express is 47 mins to Liverpool St. Now remind me again, which airport has the better comms links to London?

And Paddington to the City?

[Randy Winkman]

MX7 said:

LHRFlightman said:

Heathrow Express is 15 mins to Paddington. Stansted Express is 47 mins to Liverpool St. Now remind me again, which airport has the better comms links to London?

And Paddington to the City?

Heathrow Express is of limited value to lots in London. In most cases it just makes more sense to tolerate a long tube journey all the way to the airport. At least it's cheap.

[KTF]

bad company said:

Also you have not answered my question on WHY Stansted cannot be a successful hub airport like LHR given its better location and communication links to London, East Anglia and the Midlands.

STN is in a crap location if you have an office on the M3/M4 corridor and/or close to LHR already which is most of the multinationals.

If STN was so marvellous then it would already be in use by the major carriers already rather than the low cost airlines who have been lured there by low gate rates to make it seem busy.

When BA wound down GO, did they move their operations to STN to take advantage of the slots, no, they sold it off to EZY and moved the remains back to LHR where the money is because LHR a hub (or at least as close as we have to one given the current infrastructure).

[MX7]

Randy Winkman said:

Heathrow Express is of limited value to lots in London. In most cases it just makes more sense to tolerate a long tube journey all the way to the airport. At least it's cheap.

I agree. I think that for the City it would be far better to get to Liverpool than Paddington, so you'd land at Stansted. I understand that for the M4 corridor Heathrow is great, but if I wanted to fly in for the city Stansted or City would be better, and if I wanted the south, Gatwick.

That's why I question the emphasis on Heathrow. I think it would be better to have better links to the regional airports, and better links between them.

[KTF]

MX7 said:

That's why I question the emphasis on Heathrow. I think it would be better to have better links to the regional airports, and better links between them.

How are you going to sell that to the airlines though?

Get them to move everything from LHR to STN - which will ps off everyone who uses them at LHR as they now have to travel another 1+hr each way to get to the airport. Actually they wont, they will just use a rival carrier who still flys from LHR.

Or maybe split the service between the two airports so all the aircraft fly around half full and they dont cover their costs. Not to mention the additional overheads of doubling up on the maintenance crews, having the pilots and cabin crew move house so they are max 1hr away from the base, plus a multitude of other costs.

Airlines aren't daft. If they can smell a business opportunity then they will give it a go but none are keen to move to STN.

Just look how well Silverjet got on when they tried to base everything from LTN and thats not much further away than STN. The market simply isnt there.

Edited by KTF on Tuesday 17th December 21:39

[bad company]

KTF said:

STN is in a crap location if you have an office on the M3/M4 corridor and/or close to LHR already which is most of the multinationals.

If STN was so marvellous then it would already be in use by the major carriers already rather than the low cost airlines who have been lured there by low gate rates to make it seem busy.

When BA wound down GO, did they move their operations to STN to take advantage of the slots, no, they sold it off to EZY and moved the remains back to LHR where the money is because LHR a hub (or at least as close as we have to one given the current infrastructure).

I'm not saying that Stansted is marvellous. I am saying that Stansted could be marvellous given another runway, improved communications and more flights to become an alternative hub to LHR.

[hornet]

LHRFlightman said:

JFK springs to mind.

Anyway, look at where many of the top companies have their headquarters. M4 corridor. Now you tell me, why would they want to fly from STN when LHR is 20 minutes away?

Heathrow Express is 15 mins to Paddington. Stansted Express is 47 mins to Liverpool St. Now remind me again, which airport has the better comms links to London?

Depends where you want to go. If we're using international headquarters as our metric, then the city and Canary Wharf must also be in our consideration, in which case there's not going to be much in it between 15 minutes to Paddington, then two Tube interchanges to say Bank, or 47 minutes direct to Liverpool Street and a quick walk round the corner. If your destination is in the city, Stansted is far easier and offers a more productive use of time, as you're not faffing about with the Tube. Not as clear cut as you suggest by any means.

[KTF]

bad company said:

I'm not saying that Stansted is marvellous. I am saying that Stansted could be marvellous given another runway, improved communications and more flights to become an alternative hub to LHR.

Try explaining that to this bunch of idiots NIMBYs who seem to be amazed that living near an airport brings with it various side effects. Although that didn't seemingly stop them from buying their house in the area anyway

http://www.stopstanstedexpansion.com/index.html

[KTF]

hornet said:

If we're using international headquarters as our metric, then the city and Canary Wharf must also be in our consideration.

But if you are visiting your international headquarters, wouldn't you be getting in a cab/the car thats been sent to pick you up at the airport and expensing it back rather than mixing with the great unwashed on public transport?

[MX7]

KTF said:

How are you going to sell that to the airlines though?

Get them to move everything from LHR to STN - which will ps off everyone who uses them at LHR as they now have to travel another 1+hr each way to get to the airport.

Unless you need to get to Paddington, it's not an hour extra. Stansted to the City is the same as Heathrow. Liverpool is just as good as Paddington for London generally.

As I said, I'm commenting because I genuinely want to be educated, but could they not tell Heathrow that they are operating at dangerous levels? Or noise levels? Or transport link levels? Or anti-competitive levels? Or pollution levels? Anything, but it would mean that they would have to relinquish some flights.

I think that we would be better off by relying on 3 or 4 London airports. In an ideal world any capital would only have one airport, but very few do.

KTF said:

Airlines aren't daft. If they can smell a business opportunity then they will give it a go but none are keen to move to STN.

Just look how well Silverjet got on when they tried to base everything from LTN and thats not much further away than STN. The market simply isnt there.

But is that because we concentrate too much on Heathrow? McDonalds Regent Street will take thousands times more than the one in Bath, but they still think it's worth it.

I don't think that the amount of people flying to the UK is determined, generally, by the location of the airport. As long as there are reasonable links that are an hour or so, what's the problem?