It has been fun to read this thread ... before asking a couple of points let's say together: "Calm down, dear, it's only a political
PR exercise to make it look like they have the vision thing."
I state: NO NEW AIRPORTS IN THE UK IN THE NEXT 50 YEARS!! The reasons are all clear:
The Thames/M4 corridor is only there BECAUSE of LHR. If they thought that they COULD ditch LHR, who would pay BAAplc for T5 and the revamped T2, which would be costed over a (minimum) 20 year life span? Even converting them to other use would cost a bomb.
The airline biz in the UK has already been changed in the past 20 years by:
- Deregulation of Europe and elsewhere
- LoCos
- Privatisation of airports and carriers
- The 2007 financial crash and recession - which has another 20 years to run
- The emergence of Emirates and the other mid east carriers
- The Euro hubs of FRA, CDG + AMS have already taken most of the hub traffic and it ain't gonna come back no more, no more
- Carriers are able to use direct, long thin routes, in a way that was not open before.
- Just how much are all the carriers going to have to pay to support operations at this field? In order to do so, they would HAVE to leave one of the others (STN/LGW) and how much spare cash have the carriers got to invest in starting up, and moving to, another major field in the South East of this tiny country?
And so it goes on. There will always be a need for a 2nd runway at LGW (which will not be built) and a 3rd at LHR (which will not be built). They will not be built for the same reason that this will not be built. No UK govt has the money or the b@lls to make it happen.
silverstrata
Now I know that is what New Labour wanted for the UK, to undermine the fabric of the nation for Marxist ideological reasons, but it is not what the people of this country want.
Eeer, NO. New labour was nothing to do with Maxist ideology! It was to be the new govt in power and then turn the New Labour people into part of the establishment in a dazzling move of upward social mobility and money.
SS also stated:
The point is that a much larger airport, that is not capacity restricted like LHR, would not have to reduce traffic flows during Low Vis opps. Had this recent fog blanketed a much larger Thames airport, there would have been no flight cancellations.
So - what makes you think that they would not do the same as EGLL?? That is, over sell the landing slots beyond the capacity of the field, so as to make more money? If the UK govt limited EGLL's slots, then they could handle the days with problems more easily - but that ain't gonna happen!
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 (which is long overdue anyway), but not a short one-mile strip of concrete to alleviate the 20 stacked disaster that is Heathrow.
Well said! But this sketch of a non-existant airport is not being proposed by 'the nation' You are forgetting that politicians need to have a result visible in the press for a week and the polls for a maximum of four years. Modern politicians have no interest in the future.