Some people need to go and take a drive round the Heathrow area. There are many many companies who rely on Heathrow being where it is. From hotels to inflight meals they industry supporting the airport is huge and employs many many people from the surrounding areas. To suggest that all these people will just move over to the other side of London is laughable
There has already been a commitment to keep Heathrow with the building of T5 (A world class terminal by the way of which we should be proud rather than just banging on about the teething problems in its first week). There is as we speak millions being spent on massive engineering projects both above and below ground to improve the place. Heathrow East will now become a reality and will replace the existing old terminals with a new one to beat even T5. Of course we will all be looking for the leaking taps or broken escalators on the opening day rather than celebrating it as thats what we do in the UK.
The amount of news crews that descended on T5 once things started to go wrong was unbelievable.
As for the argument about getting to the airport i do it every day during the rush hour and dont really have any problems. The M25 is the worst part but you can hardly blame BAA for that. Just how do you think the people form the south and south west will get to the Thames Estuary anyway?
Heathrow is here to stay and long may it remain.