Yes to third runway at LHR!!

[AlphaCharlie]

Sir George,

So, are you suggesting that airlines operate city to city flights from smaller airports (eg: Edinburgh to NY or Newcastle to Tokyo)? Main problem with this is not enough demand at the smaller airports to support their own service (and hence hub airports have developed) and also these airports don't have large enough runways! Why spread out the noise pollution when it can be kept relatively confined to a few areas?

Also, whilst LHR might not be the best loctaion for a lot of UK residents, if it cannot maintain its current status, people will use Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Rome or Madrid as their hub instead! The current system ain't likely to change, so isn't it better that Britain prospers, rather than lose business to foreign countries.


Jet II,

It may just be me but I would personally prefer to travel on a British (or english as first language) airline. If I need to fly to a hub then I'd prefer it to be in my own country! I've flown to Toronto via Paris - saved myself £60! But what with the 2 hour layover in CDG and the lack of inflight entertainment in english (although I found Air France's service to be of a high standard), I would have preferred to fly direct from LHR or LGW, especially on the return leg when the last thing I wanted was to sit around CDG for 90 minutes when I was desperate to get home and get to bed!!

Also, the current congestion at LHR isn't caused by too many slots, too many aircraft or even ATC, it's caused by lack of gates and stands for the aircraft. Nearly every arriving flight at LHR goes on to a stand very very very recently vacated, or in a lot of cases, has to wait for their stand to become available! T5 will not massively increase LHR's capacity, it should simply ease congestion on the ground by having more stands available.

Also, as capacity will not be changing a lot, the third runway will simply distribute the current movements across an additional runway. The third runway is also only planned to be 2000feet (only big enough for light and medium aircraft), which if you know about how atc control departures from airports (by grouping similar sized a/c together to reduce the vortex separations) will make LHR more efficient and reduce the time a a/c is sitting on the ground, burning fuel whilst it queues to depart.