Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
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?
It would probably mean replacing the existing airport with a new one on farmland somewhere south of the existing site to line up with HS2 and the motorway network. A proper 4 runway airport needs a lot of land to keep the runways far enough apart (1km ?) to allow full simultaneous operation.
One of the problems of a 3rd LHR runway is that it will be too close to the others and be of resrticted use.