Maplin Airport
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Maplin Airport
Thames Estuary Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reading a book the other day and it dealt with work that had been carried out on plans for Maplin Airport in the 1970's.
Just goes to prove the idiot idea for an aiport in the Thames doing the rounds now is not the first one.
Mind you given it would be so far from London how could it be called a London Airport or does the distance issue only impact when its a Ryanair destination airport.
Reading a book the other day and it dealt with work that had been carried out on plans for Maplin Airport in the 1970's.
Just goes to prove the idiot idea for an aiport in the Thames doing the rounds now is not the first one.
Mind you given it would be so far from London how could it be called a London Airport or does the distance issue only impact when its a Ryanair destination airport.
New airports far removed from the metropolitan area they purport to serve have a long history, generally being proposed and championed by imbeciles with no experience of aviation, or transportation generally, who have some agenda of their own to peddle.
One thing they never do is propose to back the plans with their own money.
There have been a few actually built over time. Montreal Mirabel is a typical example. Huge area of virgin land, far from Montreal, razed to build it in the 1970s. No airline wanted to go there, so international carriers were compelled to. No domestic operators transferred there at all, they remained at the old facility at Dorval, so it became impractical for international-domestic connections, and all of this business was lost to Toronto, along with many international flights and much business influence for the city (Montreal used to be the No 1 Canadian port of entry and comercial hub; not any mre after this fiasco).
Eventually international carriers were allowed to choose which airport to use. The whole lot walked back to Dorval overnight and Mirabel was left abandoned, and finally closed, a monument to those who think they know better than the professionals in the industry.
I see Tokyo is just starting to allow international flights back in to old, central, Haneda, having forced them all out to the new, remote Narita that nobody wanted since the same time. Looks like the same is about to happen there.
One thing they never do is propose to back the plans with their own money.
There have been a few actually built over time. Montreal Mirabel is a typical example. Huge area of virgin land, far from Montreal, razed to build it in the 1970s. No airline wanted to go there, so international carriers were compelled to. No domestic operators transferred there at all, they remained at the old facility at Dorval, so it became impractical for international-domestic connections, and all of this business was lost to Toronto, along with many international flights and much business influence for the city (Montreal used to be the No 1 Canadian port of entry and comercial hub; not any mre after this fiasco).
Eventually international carriers were allowed to choose which airport to use. The whole lot walked back to Dorval overnight and Mirabel was left abandoned, and finally closed, a monument to those who think they know better than the professionals in the industry.
I see Tokyo is just starting to allow international flights back in to old, central, Haneda, having forced them all out to the new, remote Narita that nobody wanted since the same time. Looks like the same is about to happen there.
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WHBM. May I just say that I always appeciate all your historical posts. Your knowledge of commercial aviation over 50-odd years is unmatched. You remind me of dozens of things I had forgotten and inform me of even more things I never knew. Thank you. Sorry for off-topic post to everyone else.
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Originally Posted by WHBM
Mirabel was left abandoned, and finally closed.
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Were there not plans to build a Flying Boat port there in the immediate post war years? I seem to recall a proposal to build a Land plane area there as a Weather diversion for Heathrow as part of the plans.
Not forgetting of course that Maplin Sands was the location of the launch site for Space Fleet Civilian operations in Dan Dare
Not forgetting of course that Maplin Sands was the location of the launch site for Space Fleet Civilian operations in Dan Dare
I should have been more precise and said the terminal is closed. I believe it's now used as a go-cart racing track. They do indeed seem to have a few FedEx cargo flights per day out on the runways, and it's doubtless a good place for me to do touch-and-goes in a PA28 
