WHBM
The real
PR error was just closing their onetime third runway 23 as not required, having made its use as awkward as possible in the years before. If they had presented the whole thing as a runway "realignment" of 23 a further amount of opprobrium from the general press and public would have been neutralised.
I take SOE's point about space but, if it had been possible to relocate R3 to the correct place? Wow, what a day that would have been. Talk about
PR 'spin'!
I only landed once on 23 - in a Viscount from IOM! No departures. So that was the early 80s sometime. When did it close?