Evening Echo
Southend: `Airport survival rests on church'
Southend Airport cannot survive unless St Laurence Church is moved or demolished, according to bosses.
Other alternatives to give the required new safety measures at the airport could have cost more than £50million and led to massive property demolition, it has been revealed.
The airport has published details of the nine options it considered to meet new Civil Aviation Authority requirements on its website and in information to local residents.
It said an extension to the south-west was the only one which proved be viable.
A spokesman said: "While this requires the church to be relocated, this proposal is the least disruptive, involves the least number of houses and meets all statutory requirements."
To provide runway end safety areas within the existing runway would reduce the usable length by almost 50 per cent and most of the commercial aircraft using the airport could not land or take off, meaning it would not be commercially viable.
Published Tuesday, February 4, 2003
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Another article in the same paper states that the council has received 600 letters anti the airport plans (or is it pro closure?).