Lydd Questions
 

Whilst having a jaunt down by the seaside, one decided to pop in to Lydd for a few moments. A pleasant surprise was a lovely 2 seater Spitfire on the Apron outside the terminal. A quick look at the various displays inside the terminal produced a few photos and wall charts showing the progress of the airports development and in this they said that the 1505m runway could handle A319 size aircraft etc, albeit with a payload/distance penalty, though there were photos of other large aircraft that might have landed in the past. So….do any charters or private large aircraft use Lydd, especially now that Manston has been confined to the developers greed ? There used to be Cruising charters into Manston for passengers starting/stopping at Dover, might they still land at Lydd and takeoff to a longer runway elsewhere to refuel ? The plan seems to be to go for a 1750m runway, but as to how that might go down with the locals i've no idea.


SHJ

Dear SHJ

No one seems to know anything about poor ol' Lydd Airport, so let's put a lid on it :8 ;)



SHJ

Whilst on a flight deck ride in an A320, I asked what minimum length of runway they needed. They looked in their ops manual and came up with a 'balanced field length' of 1,500m so yes an A319 could operate from Lydd. An A319 operates out of London City which is shorter than Lydd at 1,500m but used to be shorter still.

No 319's at LCY, only 318's in all Business Class config (BA JFK service).

An A320 (of Titan) was recently subbed by Aurigny for ops at GCI, which has a physical runway length of 1583m.

I believe a 733 (of Small Planet) ran some charters from LYX a few years ago.

Small Planet Airlines operated the B737-300 into Lydd on a few occasions a couple of years ago following the closure of Manston where the flights were originally planned.

Thanks all for the replies, yesterday a little bird told me that none other than Paul McCartney flew from Lydd to the US/Argentina for the rest of his World Tour in a FA7X. That's a fair old stretch from a 1500m runway, so perhaps there's a niche for Lydd with transiting biz jets now and in the future.


SHJ

Macca flew into Lydd on 6th May from Minneapolis on one of Air Alsie's FA7Xs. Another of their Falcons appears to have called in there yesterday, presumably to take him to Córdoba to resume his tour, though obviously not non-stop (it departed west along UL9).

typo
 

It's his nearest runway, is it not?



QUOTE=DaveReidUK;9376302]aMacca flew into Lydd on 6th May from Minneapolis on one of Air Alsie's FA7Xs. Another of their Falcons appears to have called in there yesterday, presumably to take him to Córdoba to resume his tour, though obviously not non-stop (it departed west along UL9).[/QUOTE]

WRT 'Locals' I'm not certain that anyone really wanted an airport at Lydd, while everyone around Manston wanted to keep it as an airfield.


It's really quite sad.

I can guarantee that's not true!

I vaguely recall that Lydd was developed on the site of a former wartime ALG specifically as the 'closest' airfield to France for car freight operations eg Silver City.
It was very busy in 1959 when I attended school camp at an old Army camp at nearby St Marys Bay, with a flight seeming to depart about every 15 minutes.

Intended to supersede the grass airfield at Lympne for Bristol Freighters and later Carvairs. Known initially as Lydd Ferryfield.

Did my PPL at the 'Cinque Ports Flying Club' April 1980. Great times.

Looked on travel agents web page who operated flights with small planet airlines looks no flights from lydd this year a very big disappointment with situation at Manston and now lydd it seems another nail in the coffin for southeast airports

That was indeed it's finest hour, the car shuttle to Le Touquet with Bristol Freighters and two (later three after a nose extension) cars. Although there was a formal timetable showing every 30 minutes or so, in practice aircraft were loaded and departed as required and as people turned up. Must have been an interesting one for crewing and ops. Raymond Baxter (longstanding BBC aviation and motoring correspondent, and ex-WW2 Spitfire pilot) spoke several times about how he would put the family into his Austin-Healey 3000 on a whim on a Saturday morning, drive down to Lydd, and hop over to France for the weekend.