Skippy
Incidenally, the only B747 crash in the UK was into a field near Stansted!
Just as well it was not lifting off from 09R at LHR, eh?
This is, of course, one of the many elephants in this particular room, and nobody is talking about it. It just lurks in a dark corner. Yes, there are 'small but undeniable risks' in aviation - but when you increase traffic to 500,000 movements a year, and when you jam those movements as close together as humanly possible, you substantially increase those 'small but undeniable risks'.
At what point in time do you recognize the fact that placing your major airport in the western boundaries of your capital city, so that all flights have to pass over your capital city, was a major error in planning? No, I will rephrase that - LHR was never planned, it just happened and nobody has ever had the balls to say "Enough!"
Well now some influential people are beginning at last to wake up and say "Enough!"
Frank
Of course Stansted has most of the problems and disadvantages of Silver Island and as mentioned many times before: it does not address the issue of a lack of HUB capacity.
Once more you dodge the central issue. The whole point of making a new six-runway hub airport, is that LHR is closed down by act of Parliament. There would be no point otherwise, as everyone would try to struggle on at LHR with all the attendant noise, pollution, transport and danger issues that implies.
Either Silver-Stanstead or Silver-Boris would become the
defacto new NW Europe hub, or the reluctant airlines would have to foxtrot oscar to CDG or AMS. And personally, I see no problem here. Secretly, I bet every airline manager in the world would rather they operated from a new London airport, than struggle on with LHR and all its overcrowding and slot issues. All they are looking for, is for someone else to blame - "Oh, terribly sorry Captain Nigel of BA, I know you have a lovely house in Windsor, but you are going to have to go to Essex. Not my decision, I'm afraid; completely out of my hands...."
Snigger, snigger, and lots of Essex-girl jokes......
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