Cayley:
Furthermore, the construction is a PFI so the burden of paying airlines to move will push the return on capital employed beyond economic reality.
It will not be a PFI project. Read my post again, it will be a Q.E. project, effectively paid for by future inflation. Same kind of deal, but no need for a private-company middle man, who does nothing but make fat profits at our expense.
Cayley:
Even Boris now seems to accept that another runway at Stansted or Gatwick would be cheaper and viable.
Mixed mode on both runways has been modeled and with quiet a/c doing CDFA (controlled descent final approach) even a couple of extra hours would help.
An extra runway at another airport does not help whatsoever. We need an aviation world hub, not international passengers stranded at LHR because their domestic flight departs from LGW, in 40 minutes time.
Mix mode at LHR is technically not possible, without breaking the law. Simultaneous approaches require 1.5 km between the runways, which LHR does not have.
Frank:
Long term does not mean a new airport in the Thames estuary ... Justine Greening has also acknowledged that the country needs a four-runway airport. She is a politician, so unlikely to be thinking long term, so one would assume she means now or very soon indeed, not in 30 years time, and that she means LHR.
Read the title of the Sunday Times article - "Chocks away for Heathrow by the Sea". Does that suggest 'LHR' to you? You can misinterpret the meaning as much as you like, but the S.T. understood it to refer to the Silver-Boris airport in the Thames estuary.
Skip:
He actually thinks that not only are they building this fantasy, but we're going to name it after him. Nurse?
That is a bit disingenuous of you, Skip. As you know, we ended up with dozens of proposed alternate sites in this thread. The designation Silver-Boris or Silver-Foster is to denote a modification of their current proposals - because neither Boris' nor Foster's proposals are workable in their present state.
Aero:
Not a problem, fetch the helicopter.
As you well know, that was tried back in the 80s. It was too expensive and too noisy. And why run an expensive helicopter shuttle, with all the inherent risks, when you can have the entire aviation hub under one roof, as it were?
At Silver-Boris, you only need a driverless tram-train between the two terminals, a 5-minute hop at the most. More importantly, you are already half way to Paris or Brussels on the TGV.
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