Originally Posted by
SWBKCB
Which should just about take the extension up to the back garden of those new houses being built on Coach Lane
Surprised that your reference hasn't been seized upon for further comment. To me the further development of housing at the Dinnington end of 25 has all but killed off the possibility of their ever being an extension.
There has always been a contingent of objectors around Seaton Burn who have had to be appeased with amended flight paths & any future extension would effectively lower the approach heights on 25 inbound's. To add to this you have further development within this "envelope" significantly nearer the existing threshold albeit "slightly" to the South side of 25 approach.
It seems extremely likely that any future planning would fail on this situation alone, even before one considers the construction logistics / cost etc.
This extension "fantasy" dates back to the 70's when perhaps many of you were not even born, there was a clear requirement at that time for a longer runway due to the operational performance restriction of the equipment being operated into NCL, particularly on the DC9 variants through to earlier A320's. At this time there were also significant numbers of the classic 707's etc in operation within the IT market, that fully loaded required eight to nine thousand feet to operate without compromise. Indeed where on the limited occasions that they did operate into NCL then on occasions all was not as well as appeared i.e. TWA / Jetsave etc. though many operators had success and provided a legacy long range equipment that became available through displacement.
There was a forceful debate to obtain an extension at this time indeed the price quoted in retrospect now appears ridiculously cheap, I believe it was £2.5 M whereas you would probably be talking of upwards of £200M in today's terms. There were a number of issues to be contended at that time, not helped by the fact that the airport did not own the land required, & of course the road itself which would require rerouting or a tunnel. To cap it all I don't believe that the Governments aviation policies were in any way helpful. As such the project "died", though seems to have been appended to every future development plan over the years, but then it would be !
I would suggest that any resurgence now is simply being used in a cynical way as an attempt to make the airport more attractive to a new purchaser.
In any event it ain't going to happen, even taking all above into account, we are now moving into a more green conscious age, where the government has already touched on the need by "2050" for a reduction in flights.............
All I can say is enjoy the dream, but please don't waste everyone's time by posting "what if" destinations / services.