Report
MV, I didn't mean it to sound like the usual..."wow, if only it had been moved to Filton we'd have shiny jumbo jets to spot" post. The report comments that the runway does not conform to current best practice because of its undulating appearance, which causes problems with the ILS below 200ft. It recognises that the use of the 767 at Bristol on a regular basis is questionable, especially as there have been an unusually high incidence of hard landings. This has been directly linked to the runway. The point about Filton is that there was an opportunity before Bradley Stoke and the Mall were built, because you had land to expand, plus very good connections by road and rail. I think there would be 7m plus passengers a year at a Filton based airport, because you would have drawn more people from the M4 corridor and Gloucester north who use Birmingham now with the better road connections at Filton. I agree there wouldn't have been much more long haul, although we might have seen Emirates by now!