1950 - Ideal London Airport Location

[wowzz]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but with the advantage of hind-sight, if you had the chance to build a major London airport in 1950, knowing what we know now about the growth in air travel, the need for good ground communication links etc., where would you locate it?

[DaveReidUK]

Gatwick. :O

[5711N0205W]

SW1A 0AA...

[Heathrow Harry]

Norfolk - all of it concreted over.....................

[turbroprop]

HH

Norfolk was rejected in early 1947 on the grounds they were concerned on the amount of runway incursions, by farmers harvesting the turnips grown in the areas between runways and taxi ways.

Mind you with the trend to add the suffix London to airport names London Norwich does have a ring to it!

[DaveReidUK]

Not wishing to curb anyone's enthusiasm, but foresight and hindsight are two very different things.

Even if you had known in 1950 what would be needed 60+ years ahead, it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to build it.

To take an obvious example, building Heathrow then with just the current East-West runways would have resulted in lots of diversions and flight cancellations because aircraft at that time couldn't cope with crosswinds (hence the now redundant Star of David layout).

I can imagine if the Airports Commission had been asked to come up with a solution that would last until, say, the 2080s, its members would probably have resigned en masse. :O

[Expatrick]

Somewhere a little west of London, with sufficient space ring fenced to allow for substantial expansion & associated infrastructure!

[LTNman]

With the prevailing wind and east west runways an airport would be better north of London to avoid flying over London. This would also allow a better connection to the rest of the UK than an airport south of London.

[Wycombe]

In 1950 there was already a very nice airfield at Blackbushe - on a flat natural plateau, well-drained and often above the fog (which saw it used for LHR diversions).

It was such a good place for an airfield that the USAF wanted to build a 10,000ft runway and base strategic bombers there, but Greenham Common got that job instead (The US Navy did build a big hangar and carry-out Cold War Ops for many years though).

Many of the well-known independent airlines of the day (eg, Eagle, Britavia, Airwork) were based there, and it was used to test/train on the Viscount, Comet, Britannia, amongst others.

Then in 1960 the Govt. of the day decreed that Gatwick would be London's second Airport, and Blackbushe was closed (and a third of today's Rwy 25/07 cut-up). In 1962 it was re-opened in private ownership, and remains so, having changed hands a few times (most recently last year).

[BKS Air Transport]

It shouldn't have taken much foresight even back then to work out that the main London airport would also become the UK's main airport, and as such surface access should have been paramount. Definitely north of London, and I'd suggest it should have been on the Midland Main Line, which in those days would have had direct trains from much of the north and Scotland.

[anothertyke]

One of the military airfields although getting it out of the hands of the military would have been challenging.


Failing that, how different are 1950 and 1970? The Roskill Commission considered over 80 sites and short listed four, one of which (Thurleigh) is very much where BKS in the post above is suggesting.

[inOban]

Ie Luton!

The other thought I had was some where on the then open Great Central. There's an old airport, now a motorsports centre at Westcott, nw of Aylesbury.

[PAXboy]

inOban nw of Aylesbury.Ah yes, that area was considered too by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roskill_Commission and was their first choice.

The locals of Cublington thought that it should not be built in their back yard. Had it have been, they would have increased the value of their land immeasurably and provided countless jobs but no one wants an airport ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cublington

For the novice to this topic, this is a good summary of 60 years of bumbling and fudging: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33285659

[ShyTorque]

Croydon Airport.

[HZ123]

Thurleigh!

[PAXboy]

This would have been fab: Kings Cross Airport 1931
https://darkestlondon.com/2011/10/23/kings-cross-airport-1931/

This article has some of the other grandiose schemes (not airport related) that did not get made/finished: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/14/london-kings-cross-airport-outlandish-plans-almost-got-built

[Senior Paper Monitor]

Blackbushe

[DaveReidUK]

This would have been fab: Kings Cross Airport 1931


They built it at St Pancras instead.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148666&d=1165680310

[Harry Wayfarers]

The former Radlett Aerodrome ...

Railway lines along either side of it, M25 immediately beneath it whilst sandwiched between the M1 and A1/A1(M)

[DaveReidUK]

The former Radlett Aerodrome ...

Railway lines along either side of it, M25 immediately beneath it whilst sandwiched between the M1 and A1/A1(M)

Now that would have been an impressive bit of forecasting in 1950 !

[Heathrow Harry]

Actually plans for the London Ringways date back well before WW2 and by the early 60's the line of the M25 was pretty much fixed

the M25 was Ringway 4

The MoTransp. used to publish a map in the late '60's showing all the "strategic" roads planned in the UK - it was amazing how long it has taken to build even half of them - but the plans are still out there

[PAXboy]

If you look at the second link I gave https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...most-got-built (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/14/london-kings-cross-airport-outlandish-plans-almost-got-built)read down to 'The Ringways' and there is an explanation of the circular roads and motorways leading into the centre.

[Peter47]

You could have built something between Huntingdon and Peterborough - lots of uninhabited flat ground and closer to the North However it would be furthest from the city it served for any major city (beating Narita) and remember that ground links were much slower years ago. Foulness was the wrong side of London.

I would have stuck with Heathrow. BUT I would not have closed Northolt to commercial traffic (remember BEA started its life there) and instead have built a 7,000 ft runway parallel to the two at Heathrow and a tunnel linking the two airports. (It would have made it quicker getting between the two sites than between T1 & T4 in the days that BA ran a split operation.) This would have us a London airport with three parallel runways.

[DaveReidUK]

I would have stuck with Heathrow. BUT I would not have closed Northolt to commercial traffic (remember BEA started its life there) and instead have built a 7,000 ft runway parallel to the two at Heathrow and a tunnel linking the two airports. (It would have made it quicker getting between the two sites than between T1 & T4 in the days that BA ran a split operation.) This would have us a London airport with three parallel runways.

Interesting idea. But even in 1950, building a 7000' east-west runway at Northolt would probably have involved knocking down as many houses as the current LHR R3 plan proposes, and certainly many more than those lost when Heathrow was originally built.

And as for any subsquent extension at Northolt to match Heathrow's current runways, try fitting a 4 km swathe even on a 1950s map, let alone a more recent one.

[Peter47]

Dave

I must admit that my desktop exercise was not very scientific, taking a 1:50,000 land ranger map and seeing if you could fit in a 2,000m runway, which is slightly longer than those at DCA and shorter than those at LGA, within the airport boundary. You can, but might have trouble with the surrounding buildings on the flight path. Try it with google maps or earth.

The problem would obviously have been noise, which would have been unbearable in the age of Spey engines used in Tridents and B111s. The point I was making is that whilst it would almost certainly be politically unacceptable now to develop Northolt you might have got away with keeping it open for commercial aviation, possibly in conjunction with purchasing property under the flight path.

Anyway its all hypothetical now.

[PAXboy]

I have just seen a sequel article to the London never built. See the NYC airport that wasn't. You have to work your way down to it: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/12/new-york-never-built-skyscraper-cathedral-pneumatic-railway-in-pictures