Originally Posted by
Skipness One Echo
Oh very good point!Actually I have taxied a few times along the LONG journey to and from the Terminal at AMS and it's not actually that bad. How far is it I wonder? Northolt I think, is actually noticeably further though? Anyone know?
Looking at Google Maps as the crow flies I would say 5 miles from Northolt to LHR as you say, and 2.5 miles from 36L/18R to the main terminal area at Schiphol.
As I understand it the idea of using Northolt is for a separate terminal/runway, with a fast transport of some sort to shift passengers to the existing LHR terminals. Maybe a better solution would be a taxiway between the 2 (a la Schiphol) - would that be any more environmentally disruptive than the proposed 3rd runway? In order to generate more terminal space in the main area, the maintenance areas could be moved out to Northolt, and a new terminal 6, a mirror image of terminal 5, built on the site of the current maintenance area.
Northolt would then just provide a runway/maintenance area whilst the current LHR site would contain 2 runways and all the passenger terminals. Built with sufficient speed (like that will happen!) a T4/5/6 could be large enough to allow the complete closure of T1/2/3 for demolition. Extra remote terminal capacity could then be added like Atlanta, with parallel midfield terminals all the way between T5 and T6.