Gatwick Second Runway

[Lou Scannon]

According to the Sunday Times, BAA is about to announce plans for a second runway at Gatwick this week.

Knowing the BAA, it will probably involve widening the A23 and installing traffic lights.

[kjocky]

....and putting more speed bumps on the road to the car park.

[Capt H Peacock]

It's being sponsored by Ryanair and it'll be in Swansea.:D

[LateLandingClearance]

Last time I looked out the window we already had a second runway at Gatwick!! ;)

[chiglet]

Only when t'other one's shut :ok:
sorreeee
watp,iktch

[JW411]

Not before time; the centre of Crawley is in serious need of dramatic redevelopment!

[7006 fan]

Is it to be the one that cuts through Russ Hill, so that one feels like one is flying into the old Hong Kong airport.
Or is it the close parallel job
Or the one that flattens the Fox Revivied
Or is it the one through Langley Green and Ifield
Let me guess they are not sure but will have a scoping study to assess which one of the above choices can be dismissed and the others can then form part of a the transport green paper in about 5 years so blighting everyone from just south of Dorking to East Grinstead!!!. Cannot remember in the last 30 odd years when there wasn't a new runway planned. Suppose this is all down to bl***y lo-cost. When will BAA ever be satisfied. massive expansion at STN Terminal 5 making the M25 a misery, big upping at SOU mostly on the back of lo-co. Was in Gatwick recently, grief it was horrible full of uncooth types in jeans and trainers supping beer out of cans and chanting football songs whilst they waited for the next easyflop flight to one of the 'stag capitals' of Europe.
Flying used to be a pleasure.
:mad:

BAA know it is not feasible until 2019 and we will have run out of hydro-carbon fuel by then (according to Shell & BP -or was that just to put the price up!!!)
:E

[ATIS]

7006

It is because of these trainers and jeans people that many of us have kept our jobs following 9/11.

I couldn't agree more, when my airline turned to low cost, no joke you could see the difference in clientel over night.
Spitting on the apron on the way to the a/c suddenly became the norm.
However I am grateful for their custom, cos if it wasn't for them and their offspring I'd be flipping bugers alongside them at my local Mac's.

Long may they continue to fly

[WHBM]

BAA is about to announce plans for a second runway at Gatwick this week.Is the announcement on 1 April ?

[Rainboe]

ATIS- That, may I say, is as good an answer as I have ever read here! They are horrible though- tanked up before they get on, obnoxious and throwing up in flight.

When I used to go through South Terminal, you used to see whole families of them in matching family shellsuits, presumably so they could identify their tribe. Have the shellsuits passed out of fashion now?

[JW411]

Wake up and smell the coffee! Thank God I haven't had to face anything like that for the last 19 years.

Flying scheduled flights with punters must be the pits!

[david_wilding]

Dear All,
Why?...may I ask, dont they use the current secondary runway at Gatwick?

Is it too close to the other one or something for both to be used at once?

david_wilding.

[Kalium Chloride]

Can they put it somewhere which will be beneficial to the environment, like through a Crawley housing estate?

[LateLandingClearance]

@ david_wilding

You're spot on.

[rjay259]

K-C
would be the best thing they ever did, put a new runway thru Crawley.
259.

[Speedpig]

Rainboe,
Yes the shell suit is passe. Now they are clearly recognisable by the fake Burberry baseball cap and monster earrings (a la Beckhams). They are still penchant to swearing, swilling and spitting.
Fortunately I loiter in the North Terminal so only see the nice pax (ha!)
It is my belief that there is already a runway (the original from pre '53) to the south of the A23 which is covered in grass and only needs a spot of landscaping and reinforcement.
They moved the windmill at Lowfield Heath some years ago to what was Gatwick Zoo. The windmill was directly in line with the end of this "runway".
It would be interesting to find out how many residents that fight the second runway actually benefit from, or depend on the airport for their livelihood.:confused:

[brakedwell]

Flattening Creepy Crawley would seriously reduce the numbers of uncooth easy travellers dressed in jeans and trainers, supping beer out of cans and chanting football songs before spitting on LGW's brand new apron.

[Right Way Up]

Ah, but wouldn't it feel good.:D

[TheOddOne]

BAA know it is not feasible until 2019 and we will have run out of hydro-carbon fuel by then

You're quite right about the 2019 thing - we promised the locals that we wouldn't build a 2nd runway (usable at the same time as the main) until then, when we got planning permission for the North Terminal.

If that promise is to be broken, it will be by the Government, not us directly, though I suppose from the outside it'll be hard to see the difference.

Operationally, I think the best option would be a parallel runway to the south. John Prescott blocked a housing development a few years ago that would have interfered with that option.

However, as with all these developments, as at Manchester, wherever you have to cross one runway to get to another seriously reduces the efficiency of the operation.

I don't think taking out the Fox Revived would be necessary (hopefully!)

Current plans give entirely adequate runway utilisation up to 40 million pax with our single runway and 2 Terminals. Growth at present levels will reach this figure around 2012 - 2015, allowing for the odd recession along the way and maturity of the lo-co market.

Practically, the main reason why there might be hastened demand for a 2nd runway at LGW is if the 3rd runway at LHR doesn't happen, probably for road traffic pollution reasons.

And, the reason you can't operate 26L & 26R together is that they are TOO CLOSE. The strips overlap and even the CGAs are only 10 metres apart. We can't even open the Northern runway if an obstruction on the main is too tall, infringing the 1:7 sideslope. If we had a seriously stricken a/c on the main, one of the early options might be to cut the fin off, as happened at Kai Tak a few years ago.

7006 fan...

Will the oil run out? I think I'm with you on that one. Not that it'll suddenly run dry, but the inability to extract it to meet rapidly rising demand will I believe push the price up to the extent that mass air travel will become a thing of the past in 10-15 years. If anyone's wondering when the golden age of mass air travel is/was/will be, then we're living in it NOW.

Cheers,
TheOddOne

[CAP670]

I'd prefer the alternative option: a new 3000-metre runway south of the existing one - at Luton.

Keep that extra traffic north of the Thames...

:E

[7006 fan]

Keep 'em oop North I say!
:)
keeps me in a job!!!

[V12]

A runway south of and parallel to the A23 has always been the easiest solution at LGW, but I thought it was effectively ruled out when they built CAA Towers opposite the Beehive.
Somehow I don't think that Prescott et al could ever get the CAA to vacate and demolish for the sake of the greater good.

[Speedpig]

The CAA building took approx two weeks to erect due to it's special "bolt together" construction (meccano).
Presumably it would take little more to remove it?

[MarkD]

Ironic that the objectors to 10R/28L at DUB are claiming among other things that "LGW is single runway so DUB doesn't need a second one" when LGW's primary reason for not having one is the agreement on the North Terminal.

[PPRuNeUser0172]

I remembering hearing a similar story on the news a few years ago, it would seem that the two runways there already are too close together for simultaneous ops and because of some contract, they cant exand for several years, maybe this has now changed, as London could certainly use that capacity.

[sky9]

I'm surprised that nobody has provided the link:

http://www.baa.com/main/corporate/newsdesk/runways/airport_master_plans_frame.html

[pushapproved]

'The rumour' is basically as follows!

I quote:

The new runway - subject to consultation and Government approval - would be 1,130 yards to the south of the present runway at the West Sussex airport.

Already envisaged in the Government's 2003 aviation White Paper, the runway would not be built before 2019 and would only go ahead if an extra, third runway at Heathrow around 2015 failed to be developed.

BAA said that a third passenger terminal - in addition to the existing north and south terminals - "could and should be located between the runways".

The draft plan talks of taking slightly less land to the north of the current airport boundary than was originally envisaged, which could reduce the environmental impact of the new runway on the village of Charlwood.

With Gatwick currently handling around 31 million passengers a year, the BAA plan today said the airport could cater for as many as 45 million passengers a year by 2030 using one runway, or around 80 million a year if there were to be two runways.

[jabird]

Just curious about how they can go from being already the world's busiest airport with one runway at 31m ppa to 45 mppa using the same single strip?

What is the maximum amount of pax you can get off one piece of tarmac?

In theory v practice??

Presumably:

1 A380 every 2 minutes at 500 pax x 30/hour x 24 hours / day (I think we're talking about Gatwick's Second runway now being the new South pier at Brighton):

= 360,000 pax per day

= 129,600,000 per year, operating at this max level for 360 days per year.

Now considering that is an absolute theoretical max, aren't they stretching things far enough as is? Or is 1 every 2 minutes being conservative?

I've never understood the economics of all the billions which need to be spent on these new runways, but at what point does the environmental argument turn round and say that more fuel will be saved through less stacking etc, and that this benefit is more of a positive than the disbenefit of the land which will have to be taken to build the new runway?

My guess might be that this point, in LGW's case, was passed several years ago, but it isn't something we hear about very often.

All we get instead is the local nimbys saying they don't want the runway in Gatwick because Stansted is a better location, and then Stansted passing it to Luton, who try and pass it to Birmingham, then Coventry and so on.

This has to be one of the few places where we can get a proper debate on these issues without it being hijacked by the nimbys, but there are still many unanswered questions.