From the MEN article
Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester City Council, which has a 55 per cent stake in Manchester Airport Group, said: "It's a stunning opportunity to build on the airport's continued growth, and it is unlikely this could be created anywhere else in the UK.
The airport is planning for the long term, with passenger numbers expected to more than double to 50 million a year by 2030. Sir Howard said the recent slide in passenger numbers during the recession was a 'short-term blip' and added: "We have to prepare ourselves for the next 10 to 15 years.
Airport's continued growth? Short term blip?
There has been no growth since 2005, long before the current recession reared its head. Manchester reached the 22m mark in 2005 and there the figures stayed until 2008 when the downward trend started. The current 12 month figure is 20.7m, below that achieved in 2004.
So in the next 21 years, it is going up by 29m to 50m - in simple arithmetic an increase of around 1.4 m a year every year. Can't be a*rsed to do the compound growth sum but I think that is about 5 % growth every year.......and that doesn't feel right especially given performance before the recession kicked in.
Isn't the UK market now mature with small growth rates overall? High % growth, especially from a large base can only come from an increasing market share - and MAN has been losing share for several years, especiallly to LPL down the road.
However nothing wrong with planning for the long term and if the Airport City happens, it will no doubt be good for jobs in the long run even if the airport doesn't grow as predicted as it doesn't seem to be directly linked to pax throughput.
I think it was the final plan for Runway 2. Due to environmentalists, they had to abandon the full legnth taxiway to minimailse space needed.
A full legnth taxiway will enable more convinient alternation, rather than using the turning circle then backtracking
Not sure what you mean by alternation - if you mean what happens at LHR, you can't do it with MAN's runways as they are too closely spaced and the thresholds are staggered. Hence there was little need for a parallel taxiway on 23L as the runway could only be used for departures in the 23 direction (or landings in the 05 direction) in a two runway operation. A parallel taxiway would only be used on the rare occasions when 05R/23L is used as a single runway and the cost (including a longer Bollin Tunnel) and environmental impact didn't stack up.
IF (big if) the rules change and the runways could both be used in mixed mode together there would be a need for a parallel. I'm not holding my breath.
Suzeman