LHR Director:
<<Remember that LHR's fog problem today is due low-vis procedures>>
An interesting statement. I'm sure many on here would be glad if you would elaborate, please.
You are in ATC, I presume?
Low vis procedures require greater inbound spacing, and thus slow down arrivals - they very thing that LHR cannot afford to do. Less arrivals = more cancellations.
Indie Cent:
How can we, as a nation, be seriously proposing that we can justify cutting swathes across the entire country to build a double hi-speed railway, but not (a third runway) at Heathrow.
Because LHR is simply too small. The taxiways are full, the stands are full, the roads are full, the ground transport links are woeful, and there is no room left to swing a cat, let alone another 200,000 movements from another runway.
And where would these extra passengers go to? If no more international flights are possible, why bring in more interlining passengers? Do they just stay there, and make LHR their home? I don't understand.
Plus LHR has a considerable noise problem. It blights the lives of millions, and so has a highly limiting night curfew. A Thames airport would have no such restrictions, and would operate 24hr.
Indie Cent:
I've stared at the map of Britain and tried to work out how/why you would posiibly want to route every single passenger around London to a new airport.
One of the main reasons for a new Thames airport, is so that international passengers can interline more easily. London does not serve England, it serves NW Europe. A larger Thames site (4 international runways and 2 domestic runways), and a 24hr operation, can provide routes to all of Europe - which LHR cannot do at present.
This larger airport will also provide easier links for regional passengers to fly in and interline out to the world. At present you are limited in carriers into LHR, and the last time I tried this, my bags were late and I missed my flight (bags were not even able to be checked through to destination!). LHR is a crappy, crappy airport.
And the eastern location of a Thames airport, will also allow easy TGV routes into Europe.
Anyway, from the M1 and A1, a Thames location is no different to travelling to a LHR location. Only the M3, M4 and M40 would have longer travel times (if they used a car). And why not leave a Cross-rail station and car-park on the old LHR site, to whisk you straight to the Thames terminals?
Peter47
Its not exatly the long term planning ... but it I suspect that we can muddle through for a while yet.
That's the whole problem, Peter, that's the whole problem. That's what New Labour did for 12 years.
Out of trim:
I stand by my first comments. The North Sea / Estuary area is extremely prone to fog. Even if CAT3b gets all these aircraft landed, Low Vis procedures would still make taxy to and from stands difficult and slow.
I think you overstate the matter. You will have to provide some data, to support your position.
In the contrary view, an estuary site may be prone to sea fogs, but it does not get radiation fog - the bane of LHR and LGW. Those airport, sited on the Staines reservoirs and the Mole valley, are notorious for radiation fogs - which the Thames airport will not get. I seem to remember that our primary London diversion airport, in smaller aircraft days, was Southend - because it never had (radiation) fog.
And taxying? A new large airport with LGW's "follow the greens" system would be a doddle.
Skipness:
Why would BA move? They could stay behind and make LHR what they've always wanted, a tailored monopoly. Let STAR go sailing in the North Sea, BA's clients are in West London alongwith the entire maintenance base.
Because they would have to. It is the redesignation and sale of LHR as a industrial and housing estate that would pay for the Thames airport. We need the land-space - another legacy of New Labour policy. And this would provide oodles of jobs in the region.
Besides, travellers want a choice of airlines and destinations, not a monopoly carrier with limited interline destinations, operating from an out-of-date airport.
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