It's 45m wide. Just another of its endearing quirks.
Many thanks WWW - and FRatSTN. Entirely apposite for an airport that serves the city in which the Great Western Railway was born - another successful organisation with delightful idiosyncrasies.
Interesting report. It demonstrates what we all know that the airport is in completely the wrong location. It is quite vocal about not only the length, but the lack of visibility on the approach to 09 and undulating topography. It demonstrates the lack of foresight 20 - 30 years ago when it should have moved to Filton.
In terms of long-haul I wonder how much difference it would really have made had Filton been Bristol's airport. There would probably have been some regular holiday charter flights but the catchment size would not have been greatly increased, even taking into account the more convenient surface access, and the built-up areas particularly to the east now contain many more nimbys than the villages around Lulsgate and they've made enough fuss.
Long haul from the regions is a waste of time and the reason Bristol is so vibrant and busy and profitable is because it hasn't been distracted by pipe dreams about long haul. Are you listening Birmingham?
I can see where you are coming from in terms of airports of Bristol's size, and regional airports, even those as big as MAN, are unlikely ever to have a long-haul scheduled network anywhere near approaching that at LHR. Incidentally, Wales's First Minister seems pretty keen on turning his newly-acquired airport into some sort of intercontinental hub.
I believe that BRS has done extremely well to build up its route network to numerous important European business cities (I hope the local business community is supporting the new BMI Regional German and Italian routes) and it does provide some options for inter-continental travel via hubs such as AMS, BRU, DUB and CDG, though with only one daily rotation to the last-named now.
It also has a wide-ranging leisure network to Europe and North Africa.
LHR is not a million miles away with its world-wide route network.
All this means that both the business and leisure travellers of the Bristol city region are probably more fortunate than those in many other areas of the country.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe the important omission in all this is a Middle East hub and it might be possible to rectify that in the future even if wide-bodied aircraft are unacceptable operationally..............if they are because we don't know with any certainty that TOM has decided that they won't be used at BRS after this summer as a matter of policy.