While I agree with you, Skip, on the clear case for LHR expansion I don't think we should be glib about the noise issues. LHR is vastly worse on this issue than other London airports and this has to be faced. It is a difficult issue.
While Boris is being a bit apocalyptic in his comments I'm not sure we can accuse him of lying. An airport's noise impact is normally measured by the number of people who live within specific noise contours. I don't have the figures for CDG, but if we look at the LEQ57 noise contour for example Heathrow is 65 times worse than LGW and 192 times worse than STN. For higher levels of noise exposure LHR comes out even worse, ie 90 times LGW or 230 times STN at the LEQ60 noise level.
Again I'm not trying to argue against LHR expansion but we can't pretend this isn't a real problem.
I was having a chat on the Northern Perimeter Road on Sunday as a B788 accelerated past on take off power. I did not have to as much as raise my voice. Boris is being selective as this is all about him and his place in history.
Look at the long time-line proposed for the third rwy as suggested by the Commission. Noise won’t be a problem by the time the rwy(s) is/are built, if they ever are, all the aircraft we now consider to be “noisy” (e.g. B747-400s) will be long gone.
Yes, I see now that CDG wasn't the best comparator for Boris to use. It's the third worst airport in Europe from a noise perspective, after LHR and FRA. Not much evidence of fact checking in his Telegraph article then...
No change there then.
LGW had no one living on either approach, nor has STN but hard choices need to be made. You know, actual real and grown up decisions. Pfeffel is being wholly misleading for his own ends. Again.
Exactly.
Again, why is this millionaire politician and former banker, allowed to call himself an adviser on aviation?
My guess is that no “aviation advisor” who actually knew anything about aviation would tolerate this drivel.
How much public money has been wasted on this nonsense?
I see that Sky News (the television version) this morning is describing Boris Island as a proposed airport "In East London".
Do journalists have the faintest idea what they are writing about nowadays ?
Typical sloppy journalism, they are more interested in political correctness rather than geographical correctness, there is also no word for “geography” in Journalese.
Boris just claimed on Radio 5 it would cost as much to build a new runway at LHR as build Boris Island.
…and there are going to be 200,000 residents in the “redeveloped” Heathrow. That would mean several living on the streets, the Heathrow site isn’t that big.
Maybe the tune will change once Boris is the candidate in Uxbridge, many residents work on the airport and would probably quite like to keep their jobs.