Originally Posted by
2016parks
I see that the government of France has nixed construction of a proposed new airport. Per Wikipedia, ‘The Grand Ouest Airport, or Aéroport du Grand Ouest Project was to be situated 30 km (20 mi) to the north-west of the French city of Nantes in the commune of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. It was intended for the new airport to replace Nantes Atlantique Airport as the airport for Nantes, but also to serve as an international gateway for western France.’
Major new airports are rare, I believe. Are the other French airports overcrowded?
Well I’m glad that’s over....if it is ....according to a report on French TV the other day this whole saga has been running since the late 60’s.
I don’t know the specifics of Nantes, there may well be very good specific reasons (location vs. city) there for a move to a green field site, but I’m not sure many airports in deepest France are so overwhelmed with traffic that they need a new build.
What I think has happened elsewhere in France ( I stress IMHO only, so would be interested to hear other opinions on this- just seen SHJs point and agree) is that 10 to 20 years ago many local politicians wanted their own departmental airport to attract money spending tourists to their department, flying in with the then fast expanding LoCos such as Ryanair (thinking about it it is possibly a classic example of a cargo cult).
We had one planned locally but it never made sense - we already had a modern twin runway international airport in the department next door and v g motorway links to the same, plus a couple of other smaller airports just outside the departmental boundary.... I doubt anywhere in the department was more than 90 minutes drive from an airport served by Ryanair or EasyJet. Nevertheless somebody at departmental level (think U.K. county by way of comparison) came up with a hare brained scheme for a brand new airport on a greenfield site. Enquiries and protests followed...and I mean proper French protests...involving farmers....
. Fortunately for just about everybody the department ran out money for infrastructure projects and the plan got binned. One or two other departments elsewhere did build or significantly expand airports..... and they are now saddled with acres of little used concrete/terminal buildings.