LGW? Very nice......when they have built another runway (for that matter where is LHR's desperately needed runway?
You got it right....but there won't be another runway at LGW until some moment between 2020 ands 2024 at the earliest, and that's only
if someone agrees to finance it, and
if a planning consent is forthcoming in 10-13 years time.
LHR's
desperately needed 3rd runway remains firmly located in FantasyLand; ie it isn't going to happen. The measures needed to satisfy environmental requirements that the UK is firmly signed up to, and will not go away, are so costly that the project is a non-starter. (The cheapest is to tunnel the M4 for about 25 miles, just to give you a flavour of the problem).
I was marginally involved with the first scheme (1980's) to put a STOL runway between the northern runway and the M4, when Charles Stuart was pushing that along. As usual the bean-counters killed it dead by talking about all the things that could, barely conceivably, go wrong, ably assisted by NATS's inability to contemplate any change to the way things had been done for the last 30 years
(example: "low-level routes to/from that runway, from/to the North, are not possible"). The opportunity has now disappeared for ever.
For good measure, I have the strongest doubts that we'll ever see a 2nd STN runway. Ask yourself who is going to finance it, even if a planning consent is forthcoming, when the airlines, led by Ryanair, are pretty much unanimous that the only reason they use STN is that it's cheap, and that if that changes they'll be off. It's useless as a business airport for London until billions are invested in a fast surface link, and no-one's going to move to STN for the interline business.
It all goes back to the airports consultation in 2002/3; over £100m was spent in justifying, with some of the most spurious statistics and most blatant lies ever published by the present Government, a 'fait-accompli' decision to ignore all and any airport development projects for increasing London airports' capacity that did not have the name BAA on them. The fact that BAA had 25 or so staff "seconded" into the DfT to "help" with the study had nothing to do with the outcome, of course.
Several very viable, and do-able, projects were chucked out, while the Government "supported" putting a new runway at each of the BAA airports, knowing full-well that it was and remains likely that none will actually happen, except,
perhaps, at LGW in 2020 or later.
But the decision did wonders for BAA's value, so that the inevitable sale of the company to the highest bidder regardless of UK PLC's interest, after getting that decision and before it became clear to all that the Government's strategy was in tatters, was at the maximum price for the shareholders. Cui bono; who is now very wealthy indeed as a result?
During that process, BAA also enlisted NATS to parrot some outrageous fibs about airspace use around London (
Paraphrased example: "A 2000' runway at Redhill, parallel to LGW's runway, probably cannot be operated safely"), so as to kick some of the other projects into touch. The fact that BAA had just bailed NATS out of bankruptcy, and was owed tens of millions as a result, did not influence NATS' objectivity, of course.
The whole disgraceful episode, master-minded by the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, was an object lesson in how appallingly badly Britain is really governed, that took even people experienced in the ways of Government aback.
The shopping mall strategy of airport management has been/is being discussed elsewhere on pprune, a propos BAA and Ferrovial. Yes, of course it's time to ban retail apart from essential goods and catering from terminals, and use the resources freed up for passenger processing. But with retailers not air transport managers running airports that's unlikely.
Have I drifted the thread? Not really...what happens around London affects every airport in the UK, including LBA.