Originally Posted by
Fairdealfrank
The mistake was not replacing them with new parallel rwys north of the A4 Bath Road back in the day.
Interestingly, if you look at the A4 to the north of the airport you will see two open areas that have never been built on, either side of the Heathrow Hotel.
I don't know if it's an urban myth, but the story goes that those areas have been safeguarded for possible link taxiways ever since the original 9-runway proposal (3 of them north of the A4) back in the late 1940s.