Originally Posted by
ANGRYBEARD
I'm from Thanet and I feel you may of got some of the facts wrong... It is Westwood Cross and it has been in development since the late 90's. Primarily a retail and entertainment area,opened over 10 years ago with the housing part of it only being quite recent. It is a long way from being a town and up take has been quite limited, with most of the abandoned farm land remaining empty.
As far as people coming from Lewisham??? The whole of Thanet is populated with people from the London area, with the seaside draw being bigger than ever with the reinvention of Margate. There are only probably a few dozen houses built so far and the planned site of the school is now a supermarket. From the site you can see one of the many areas designated a business park, lying empty, but the space here is nothing compared to the large areas planned for business and industrial use next to Manston, with the first new buildings there in over 10 years.
Riveroaks plans have been well advertised in the local press, with the links we have on this forum. There have been no lies. I don't want to disrespect your guests, but they have obviously heard what they want to.
The owners plans for Manston have been little more than a map coloured in, freight has always been the main earner for Manston, with other potential following, passenger flights are planned on the same scale as ever, with the increasingly affluent, growing local population wanting the choice to connect to the world or take their holiday charter without enduring the misery of the M25 and the chaotic, in personal experience of the London airports.
Whether it be Weston Cross or Westwood Cross might be considered nitpicking!
As for connecting to the world Manston had that opportunity with KLM connecting Thanet to KLM's, and all their codeshare partners, world, but two or three Fokkers, or whatever, a day don't make for a viable airport.
You say that freight has always been the main earner for Manston, is that because it failed so miserably trying to attract passengers that the occasional freight movement won every time?
I worked for some 7 years in the cargo airline business, I do recall the occasional loaded freighter going thru Manston but more often than not the freighters were in Manston for maintenance with Jet Support, they weren't carrying revenue loads and what part of "THE RUNWAY ISN'T LONG ENOUGH" do you people have difficulty understanding?
And, yes, I did put a loaded freighter in to Manston one day, it was an F27 on it's way back DUS/SEN when pretty much all of England fogged out, Manston popped up with 1,000m RVR so we diverted it in there ... There, you can add a diverted F27 freighter to your statistics!
As for holiday destinations, EUJet tried it with modestly sized F100's and they failed miserably, Flybe had a route or two out of Manston but they couldn't make those work, as per my previous post the people of Thanet are being led to believe that with a re-opened Manston they can be jetting off to a holiday destination of their choice from their doorstep airport, well someone needs to tell these people the truth!