Given that most who visit and post on the hallowed pages of PPrune have some understanding of the air transport industry I'm amazed at the diversity of views on here re additional airport capacity.
I have to confess that when in opposition the Conservative party said that if they won the 2010 election they would bin R3 i was gobbed smacked and to me it showed the naivety of DC & Co, airport expansion is always going to be politically difficult, but Labour had already given the go ahead, why pick a fight you don't need to?
Before the coalition kicked it into the long grass I had very clearly come to the conclusion that in spite of everything else there was only one practical place to increase hub capacity and that was at LHR, i have read in full the interim report from the Davies Commission and I have seen nothing that changes my view, in fact it only reinforces my view.
You have to view this from a passengers point of view, be it business or VFR, if you are visiting London (inside the M25) then only LHR/LGW cut it, from an airline/passenger perspective you need high frequency, you need London to Geneva/Paris/Berlin/Amsterdam every hour and JFK/DBX/LAX/LAS at least the same, that cannot and will not happen outwith a hub and that means LHR.
LGW does a great job, the worlds busiest single runway airport and i don't buy their argument that they can't fund another runway if LHR R3/R4 get the go ahead, LGW is is with lean low cost Easyjet/Norwegian.
With best will in world EMA/BHX is just too far away, if i go to visit a capital city i don't want more than 20-30 mins to the city centre, you need a bullet train from EMA for that, FFS it doesn't even have a train station and the HS2 plans to go underneath (150m !!!)
So lets bury the politics, tell Zac Goldsmith to get a life ditto Jan Greening and stop fanny'ing around and get some D9's on the ground (bulldozers not DC 9'S)