Gov future transport plan - do airfields have a place in it?

[tracer.smart]

There are airfields everywhere, and train services / commuter services are generally poor.

All you pilots / CAA guru's out there; Is there any reason why there are not more public light aircraft shuttle services operating between grass strips?

Did I hear somewhere airfields used to be part of the Gov's future transport plan, but that they are now off the agenda and being turned over to housing estates? Any ideas why?

[Blue Meanie]

Worth more to sell them to barratt.

[aclivity]

tracer.smart said:

There are airfields everywhere, and train services / commuter services are generally poor.

generally poor? So a plane capable of landing and taking off from a grass airfield would need to make how many trips to carry the 1000 or so people that can fit on a single commuter train? And it would land how close to a city centre location?

[anonymous-user]

tracer.smart said:

There are airfields everywhere, and train services / commuter services are generally poor.

All you pilots / CAA guru's out there; Is there any reason why there are not more public light aircraft shuttle services operating between grass strips?

Many of these grass strips become waterlogged over the winter.

I expect there simply isn't enough demand and the weather and facilities at these 'airports' make their use as mini hubs not that useful.

Looking at even the larger airports with sealed runways I doubt there are many examples where a commute could be achieved regularly where a train service (woeful as they are) wouldn't actually serve better.

Look at people working in London say they lived on the south coast. They could get the train to most places from central London stations or they would have to get to somewhere like Biggin Hill and then fly weather permitting to Shoreham and then get home from there.

Noise is probably another issue.

Edited by el stovey on Monday 24th November 16:21

[SleeperCell]

Blue Meanie said:

Worth more to sell them to barratt.

Well, for a while anyway

[eharding]

Most of the grass airfields with poor drainage have long-since gone out of business - the remainder tend to be fairly well drained (with a couple of notable exceptions). I've never yet been forced to abandon a flight owing to flooding at White Waltham (including that monumental day in July last year when the whole of South ground to a soggy flooded halt - I remember flying along the M4 after it had been shut by the landslide to display at a wedding South West of Reading and just seeing solid traffic disappearing off into the distance - 10 minutes transit time for the display, it took me 5 hours to drive back to the wedding reception afterwards..)

There is an appreciable amount of air-taxi work going on between small provincial airfields and farm-strips, but its a niche market and not exactly cheap. Unless you have some fairly high-end kit then the weather will always be an issue.

[henrycrun]

I think this was an area that Richard Noble wanted to develop. Look for Farnboro F1 http://www.richard-noble.com/

Edited by henrycrun on Monday 24th November 20:16

[thunderbelmont]

The East of England Plan had a development proposal to build on North Weald Aerodrome in Issix (local dialect).

I wrote a lengthy response to the plan, citing future trends in travel, that how are they to know that in the future we do not use air travel more, requiring MORE airfields, not less.

The response from them was that it was a very valid point, and had been discussed at length at their many meetings.

We don't need more roads really, we need personal air transport. We need air taxi's, we need air-buses. We need Deloreans with 1.21GW nuclear fusion propulsion units that run on the remnants of a can of 7-up and a banana skin.

Then the airfields will need good quality permiter tracks, with pit complexes, etc....