Gone for housing. Covered with containers last time I flew over.

What if Bassingbourn could be wrestled from the MoD? Just saying.

Aaron.

Got that right. A 250-property housing estate near me is being built at a rate of 25 homes a year. At one every two weeks the developers can practically name their price.

Too close to Stansted, which was the reason it was closed in the first place.

Base leg for 22 runs parallel and half a mile north at 4000’ and “over the top” inbounds from the West pass directly overhead.

Wouldn't be cheap to reinstate the runway and taxi ways though.

What about Bourn Airfield, it's close to Cambridge. Rural location and it's in use as an airfield so less issues in some respects. Relatively good road links too.
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Bourn is already earmarked for housing

How about Manston? Good runway, fair bit of space for site development, don't how it fits in with their location requirements.

I would imagine that for continuity purposes they would want to stay within commuting distance of Cambridge. If not I'm sure there are a whole host of potential sites that would be interested. Some of them are even active airfields.

Then surely the answer is Cambridge airport which is already developed sufficently for their needs and shove the bloody houses on those disused / closed airfields within commuting distance that everyone has discounted as unsuitable for flying operations, or am I being too logical.



..

Nut - the Great British Public only see a large open area with a few aircraft wandering around every so often - and no-one likes commuting

TBH I could see the Council weighing 4000 jobs or so and saying "we can get 10,000 new jobs and a load of houses on that site" - on your way

Even more worrying is to look at the Marshall Group website - it lists their Property division as second to their Aerospace division...............

CM,
If Marshall's did relocate to Wethersfield I would imagine their traffic density would be low and relatively straightforward to co-ordinate with Stanstead arrivals/departures - certainly easier than Northolt/LHR due to numbers (though it may require yet another airspace grab). However, Wethersfield is, IIRC, fairly basic nowadays so there would need to be considerable infra investment which may well be beyond Marshall's means. Bentwaters / Woodbridge (if the upcoming SDSR closes it) are likely better options - though with a load of anti-flying locals - but at least other tenants to shoulder some of the costs. Still think Cranfield is favourite. Is North Weald too small?

Probably more space at Weald than there is at Cranfield.
Probably more grumpy locals though, which will be the issue wherever they go these days.

Other than the mutual benefit maybe from the college and industry co-located in one place, I can't see there being enough space at Cranfield to build new facilities to replace what they have at Cambridge?
Unless the intention is to significantly reduce facilities once moved because of eventual C130 OSD?