Jeremiah Green
By 2030, what price oil? I think we should forget any idea of airport expansion in the UK. In fact I suspect I shall live to see lots of runways and roads grubbed up to turn back into farmland. Have a look at population growth figures, and our future ability to pay for imported foodstuffs. This bubble we are living in will not last for ever. Google exponential growth. As a species the future may not be as good as the present.
Ahh, the positive thinking of your average Jeremiah Green - civilisation is about to die, and we shall accelerate that process by forcing everyone to use unreliable energy supplies that will bring the economy crashing to its knees.
Greens have a death-wish, just as Jeremiah had a death-wish, and we listen to their inane blatherings at our peril. They were a total irrelevance until they took over the BBC, so its about time the BBC licence fee was reduced to £5 a year. That would put the Lion among the Jeremiahs.
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Back in the real world, it is now Gatwick who have thrown their hat into the ring with plans for a dual runway layout:
Gatwick Airport bosses unveil £9bn plan for second runway that could open by 2025 | Mail Online
Well, I suppose with Gatwick being the busiest single runway in the world it needs a second runway anyway. I'v had enough of 2 mile spacing on the approach and 'land afters'.
But will Gatwick become the answer to the UK capacity problem? Answer - No. We are back to the same old problem of interlining, where international passengers want to connect to 'domestic' airlines or to good TGV surface transport. I am not flying into Gatwick, to jump on a bus to Stansted to catch my commuter link to Copenhagen.
And while you might say that Gatwick has fairly good 'domestic' links already, it has several problems in that regard.
Firstly, much of that traffic is charter, which is not available to long haul interliners.
Secondly, the airport is already full. Two of the designs are for 'segregated mode' runways, and how many extra flights would that allow? And if the runways were only 700m apart, the new terminal would presumably be on the north side. That would mean crossing a runway. Have you ever tried crossing LGW's runway? You could be waiting all day. This is an airport where the take off clearance is something like: "Be ready for absolute immediate departure", "Line up and take off immediate - go now!" Yeah - how are you going to get crossing heavy traffic into that scenario?
The final option is for a 1000m spacing to allow independent parallel approaches, and what looks like a terminal in between the two. This is a better idea, but you still end up with a new Heathrow that is on the wrong side of the country for surface transport (direct rail line to Leeds anyone?) And you also end up splitting the UK's interlining hub between two airports, which is still not the answer. You would end up with both LHR and LGW having inadequate 'domestic' flights to serve long-haul customers, and if more 'domestic' destinations are served by AMS or CDG, then customers will go there.
As I said before, I met a party of tourists last month traveling AMS-BRS, having flown in from South America. Why were they using AMS instead of LHR? Because there were no flights from BRS to LHR, and so the UK capital and the UK 'national airline' loses out once again. Brain-dead planning by successive brain-dead governments, who are only interested in making easy and popular decisions, to burnish their political reputation.
The proposed LGW.
Silver