PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Heathrow before the Europa terminal and Queens building
Old 16th Mar 2021, 22:21
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WHBM
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: London UK
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Edinburgh : I seem to have been everywhere that gets discussed, and I was at university there early-mid 1970s, from the first discussions about the "new" runway (with its approach directly over our professor's house in Cramond, so we heard it all) through to its opening and the new terminal. For some reason three of the four major airports in Scotland in that era, Prestwick, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, all had their main runways at right angles to the prevailing wind. Only Glasgow was the "right way round". There was extensive coverage that because of the short runway BA had to continue using Vanguards, not jets, but when BUA started One-Eleven ops to Gatwick there were Comets, and then Tridents, slipped in at competitive times, and by the time the new runway was complete it was an all-Trident operation anyway.

Bits of the old terminal, on the opposite side of the airport, were still there when I last looked some years ago, a set which would have given Heathrow Northside a good run in the ramshackle stakes. It faced the ramp and didn't even have double glazing - Vanguards manoeuvring directly in front of the windows made any communication impossible. As these doing so were audible from up at Edinburgh Castle, 6 miles away, it must have been ear splitting for the staff.

Well remember when BUA became B Cal they introduced a 10pm departure "Moonjet" to Gatwick. I think the fare was £6.60 each way. In more recent times I went up to Edinburgh when a 146 was operating some of the Scot Airways flights from London City, otherwise a Dornier turboprop run. Left the terminal one evening, maybe 15 years ago, turned an unusual way, and actually did a runway 13 takeoff to the south-east. Just like a generation beforehand.
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