Originally Posted by
The Ancient Geek
The elephant in the room is that everyone is asking the wrong question.
Should Britain's principal airport be located in the southeast corner ?
Surely our principal airport should be located closer to the centre, with good motorway and high speed rail links. A large swathe of open country will be needed together with a planning restriction to keep all new housing at least 5 miles away.
BHX would be a stong candidate for a new airport with 4 runways, an M42/M6 spur and a station on the new planned high speed rail link. The best future for LHR is closure for redevelopment on the very valuable land. Boris Island is a stupid idea, it is in the wrong place for everybody, even londoners.
Actually, Birmingham expansion was one of the options that Davies considered.
His Catch-22 verdict was that its only chance of being viable would be if HS2 goes ahead, thereby giving BHX the largest catchment of people within 2 hours of any of the other options - but that HS2 also would make the London airport system easier to access for passengers from Birmingham's core aviation market.
Out of interest, given that extending the current single runway required rerouting the A45, where would they fit the other 3 in?