Jabird
Now LGW isn't perfect either - but it is the least bad of all the options.
If you can get the locals to agree to a 6-runway airport I might agree, to a degree, but the planning makes this idea dead in the water. Even the STN idea just will not run.
The only option is to place the airport somewhere remote, and in the UK the Thames estuary is about as remote as you can get (while still being just 20km from London). The Thames is the only option, and the only real decision to be made is whether to go for the Isle of Grain or the actual estuary itself.
Navpi
One other point can't recall the figures but by way of example circa 160,000 pax a year travel from the N West to use one of about 8 daily LHR - Hong Kong services. From the airlines point of view absolutely logical but why not put at least some of that demand where it originates....Manchester!
What should be happening, Navpi, is that there should be 15 daily commuter flights in from MAN and BPL and the like, all converging on LHR and then taking those passengers onwards to HK. Plus a TGV rail link doing likewise.
But it does not happen because LHR does not have the capacity to accept the commuter flights, and LHR is not on a mainline railway. To get in to LHR for an 0700 departure, you would need to leave Manch at about 01:00 (to get to Euston and then back out to LHR via the tube !! ). But I seem to remember that such an early train does not exist, and so now you are in for a nightstop at LHR to catch the flight the next day.
And even if you do manage to get an interline flight from Man, LHR will either:
a. Fail to interline your bag and then take 1hr to get it to the reclaim, so you miss your HK flight.
b. Close the transit corridor at 23:00 so that you get stuck in a transit lounge deep inside the terminals, with locked doors all around. We had to call the police to rescue us, and only caught the outbound flight because the company heard of our woes and held the flight.
So the answer is not to use MAN for more HK flights, which may be thin routes and unreliable/unprofitable, but to get a decent world hub in the UK that actually works.
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