what next for londons airports ?
flashgordon1952
Posts: 3,799 Forum Member
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london area has currently 5 airports namely heathrow,gatwick,stansted,luton and southend.
Currently only southend is haveing any major work been done or done in the last year.namely the new terminal and the extension of the runway. this airport should be open for full business by the spring of next year when easyjet will have by then increased the number of destinations and made it a major hub..with a potential 60,000 movements+ by 2015.
However stansted is not so lucky they are still waiting for the green light from the govt and essex county council to increase capacity and that well wanted second runway .
Its likely before that they will increase the size of the current terminal and a new freight terminal to be built.
Heathrow is now a non starter ! itswill not get the third runway that those bad boys at BAA (who by coincidence have changed there name to heathrow airport (i wonder why)
Basically they dont deserve anything in my opinion and BA is probably the cause of it..
Gatwick again wants that second runway ! now there is a problem here the council refused a new runway till at least 2019 but this is where things get iffy. The agreement was with BAA and not the new owners and its believed gatwick will now get a second runway and a new terminal as well (horray)
Luton airports plans seem to be going well. they have increrased the airports capacity and done a lot of work and now reaping the benefits of it.. this airport is like southend going places...
what of the future ? heathrow extension plans "dead and burried" southend and luton to prosper and Gatwick tofinally getthat 2nd rumway they wanted 30 years ago
Currently only southend is haveing any major work been done or done in the last year.namely the new terminal and the extension of the runway. this airport should be open for full business by the spring of next year when easyjet will have by then increased the number of destinations and made it a major hub..with a potential 60,000 movements+ by 2015.
However stansted is not so lucky they are still waiting for the green light from the govt and essex county council to increase capacity and that well wanted second runway .
Its likely before that they will increase the size of the current terminal and a new freight terminal to be built.
Heathrow is now a non starter ! itswill not get the third runway that those bad boys at BAA (who by coincidence have changed there name to heathrow airport (i wonder why)
Basically they dont deserve anything in my opinion and BA is probably the cause of it..
Gatwick again wants that second runway ! now there is a problem here the council refused a new runway till at least 2019 but this is where things get iffy. The agreement was with BAA and not the new owners and its believed gatwick will now get a second runway and a new terminal as well (horray)
Luton airports plans seem to be going well. they have increrased the airports capacity and done a lot of work and now reaping the benefits of it.. this airport is like southend going places...
what of the future ? heathrow extension plans "dead and burried" southend and luton to prosper and Gatwick tofinally getthat 2nd rumway they wanted 30 years ago
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Due to this, there is a near 24/7 train service (except Sunday mornings) and a 24/7 bus service into London.
I agree. Air travel is hardly environmentally friendly.
Let alone the noise.
I don't see that happening. Air travel is here to stay - both for business and for leisure purposes. To go from the UK to say, Australia there really is no alternative - you have to fly. OK, you could take a boat but it would take weeks. Not practical.
As long as there is a demand for flights there will always be a need to build places for them to take off and land.
Maplins Sands? both these places are full of birdlife, dangerous to aircraft I would have thought.
No doubt some one has already done a study of this.
Or even Lydd airport on the Romney Marsh, that's well away from housing.
And there in a nutshell is why the "green" agenda is doomed to fail because it's so busy trying to get everyone to stop doing things rather than thinking of new ways to replace what we already do.
Don't drive, don't fly, don't use power. Until you lot tell us how we can achieve the same result another way you'll never get people to stop.
London- Oxford...makes me larf,
I live not far away..it's just field with a couple of smallish buildings and a very short runway
London doesn't need another airport. It's not big enough to justify it. They need to better manage the ones they have at the moment. Building bigger terminals to cope with the people using them would be a start. Building to allow larger aircraft to use the airports we have would allow less flights, but more passengers. However, frequency is key for the busy routes anyway, so that also needs to be considered.
Build the new terminals at heathrow but leave it at 2 runways. No point at all in building a 3rd. It'll take literally decades to come about and will cause nothing but delays, upheaval and confusion for people in the local area. No to mention the fact that any building work will be attacked by the greenies and just be drawn out by various court cases and other pointless delays.
Stansted should have had 2 runways by now. That's obvious. They should have built it in the 1980s and 1990s so that we had the space for the extra traffic we see today and none of these protestors were around. However, as usual, the UK lacked any forward thinking whatsoever and we've ended up with the mess we have today. Look at the likes of Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin or Amsterdam. They got on with it and built the infrastructure years ago. Berlin is getting a new airport built as we speak, which is going to replace the other two. They're not just adding a new pier to an existing terminal or extending a little bit of runway, they are building a massive transport interchange and a modern terminal building which will cope with expected traffic levels for the next 30 years! All of this is happening on the land of an existing airport.
I've heard of some ideas of building a high speed railway link between LHR and LGW. Good. Do that and do it soon, start today FFS! That would mean they could throw all the short haul, domestic and charter stuff to Gatwick and leave Heathrow to deal with the long haul flights. Instantly we'd see much better management of the airspace. No doubling up of flights from both airports to the same destinations would reduce a lot of traffic. Transfers between the two would take less time than it takes to go between terminals at Heathrow! It should have been done years ago, but, of course, they were all sat around arguing about T5 or the 3rd runway or something else, which they will still be doing for years to come. They used to have a helicopter transfer service between LHR and LGW...but, of course, they stopped that.
It's meant for business flights and private aviation so it does keep a lot of that stuff out of the way from the larger, busier airports. Northolt takes some private flights too. I think scheduled flights to Oxford used to run to cities such as Edinburgh, but they went bust, however I do believe they are starting again soon.
Great idea, lets build more roads and cars, rail tracks and trains.
In fact cover the whole of the countryside in tarmac, problem solved.
Building more rail tracks and trains would actually be a good idea, as trains are environmentally friendly, especially if they have regenerative braking.
The reply wasn't about stopping air travel, but cutting down on it.
Just don't ask the councillors of Edinburgh to get involved, since Edinburgh's tram project is 3 times over budget, half the intended distance, and 3 years late!
And due to open after Nottingham's Lines 2 and 3 which started construction this year! (Just after Edinburgh re-started theres)
I can see we do need a big hub airport most major cities do have them London is odd in having 7 airports, especially when cities like Berlin have decided to shut 3 and build 1 massive one.
I'm in no doubt of the need just the issues is where! London is blessed/cursed because there are many options open (yes most are not popular)
Heathrow Expansion is good because links are in place already and it is an established airport, the drawbacks are the demolition of communities, increased air traffic over very highly occupied areas, with air and noise pollution.
Gatwick is a possibility it has decent links, there is space for some expansion there, but it is further and lacking links to Birmingham/ Manchester and Highspeed1 which is a major drawback.
Stansted has room for major expansion it was designed to become bigger than Heathrow, it does have good links, yes they would need upgrading but so would if expansion was anywhere else. It is a very good candidate also because it is so under capacity at the moment the expansion would cause less disruption.
Major expansion at London City is obviously never an option! Also Southend has little space to expand.
Oxford has space but I dont think would be viable option.
Luton looks like it has space, so could be possible but I don't think like Oxford there is any political will for it to happen.
Farnborough, Ashford, Kent all have good potential, the advantage to Ashford and Kent is the link to High Speed 1 which would be a major bonus opening up many more options.
A Thames Estuary airport (In any of the proposed locations) would cost even more with the costs associated with building in water. But there is massive potential to build a Super Hub, though at massive wildlife cost.
I think the future holds expansion for at least 1 of the South Easts Airports. And ultimately I think a few might also close in future if a super hub is built as it is very odd for a City to have that many airports.
But if the all out option is taken to build a super hub and all other airports closed even Heathrow, it would require such a major redraw of almost everything UK Airspace road rail water links, but it does have potential to make London the worlds largest hub which would bring major economic benefits not alone the billions pumped into the economy by building the airport.
No option will be popular at the end of the day, some group of people will always fell hard done by but the rewards for doing it could be major.
And personally I was orginally against expansion but since looking into it I agree with Boris in part and think the best option is Stansted and second of all Thames Estuary. I honestly think Boris has thought of the economic benefits it would being to London and at the end of the day that is his job!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Luton_Airport
So, there may be expansion possibilities towards the east.