Heathrow... how many runways?

[Workingman]

It might not be three.

There is now a legal challenge to the government ministers' approval of the third one based on a few things:

* Failure to provide information about the Heathrow decision-making process
* Flawed understanding on ministers' part of the capacity for new air traffic movements created by extending the airport's northern runway
* Unlawful for the DfT to "effectively" [give Heathrow] a veto over other proposal

So runway three is going nowhere ATM. The challenge of itself puts things on hold and delayed till the legal decision is made, and it could succeed.

About 10% of Heathrow flights are cargo only, they could go anywhere. About 45% of passengers are on transfer to the rest of the UK, Europe and the World. What is wrong with Gatwick, Stanstead and Luton for those?

[Suff]

There are some very good reasons for Heathrow.

It has extremely good access routes into it. Gatwick is horrendous by comparison. Gatwick is a hell of a lot further to go for anyone who doesn't live south of London and, even if you do, you have to get on the M25 for about 60% of the people there. The airport is surrounded by countryside who would have a major conniption if you started trying to put in an East West motorway to suck in the traffic to Gatwick from the South. Coming in from the North, anywhere, is an issue with M25 traffic.

As for hubbing people through other airports? Gatwick is second class compared to Heathrow, Stansted is baggage class and Luton is a tin shack. Not the best impression we want to give. Contrast Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin airports, all large, modern and extremely good airports to hub through. As is Schiphol. Paris CDG is a bit of a mixed bag but Terminal E (a lot of hubbing), is extremely modern and efficient. All of these international airports have multiple hotels on the airport itself and significant numbers of others within a very short hop. All are trying to compete, or beat, Heathrow.

We're supposed to be upping our position in the world. All we're doing is dragging ourselves down in the mud. The perennial "effort" of post Empire UK.

This needs to be done. I'm with BoJo with a Thames Estuary airport with new rail and road links into it. However the cost is so high we'd have to dump HS2 to pay for it and I'd rather see Heathrow 3rd runway and HS2/3 than that. We can always make a 5th airport in the estuary at another point.

There has been more than one legal battle over that one. However, if the NO camp doesn't start getting reasonable, they'll wind up with a bill of rights passed like the mobile phone tower one. Where you suddenly find you can't stop them putting in mobile towers unless you have an extremely good reason. Neither can local councils. The government took the right away.

If they don't stop this attempt with the third runway at Heathrow we might wind up with legislation which will allow developers to destroy half the countryside by abusing it.

But that has never stopped them yet has it? Blind to any consequences, blind to any position but their own. Determined to use any artifice of the law to get their own way.

[Workingman]

Gatwick is a hell of a lot further to go for anyone who doesn't live south of London.
and
I'm with BoJo with a Thames Estuary airport.

So rather than freeing up slots at Heathrow by moving them (cargo) somewhere else those of us north of Hellthrow have to bypass it and go to Gatwick or Kent. What a brilianltly cracking idea that is.

[Suff]

No that was not my idea.

I want the third runway so we don't have to.

Just go and look at those airports and tell me whether the road systems around them could handle the cargo onward shipment. I submit that they can't.

If you want to suffer two decades of road disruption as we change the road infrastructure so we don't have to have a Heathrow 3rd runway, fine. But I, personally, wouldn't want to pay that price.

Motorway the A14 and the rest of the A1 and put a runway in the Thames Estuary. I'd go for that. But nobody else will.

So the alternative is to put a 3rd runway in at Heathrow. The only other viable prospect is Stansted and, lets face it, it is simply too far out to be really viable in relation to Heathrow and they'd have to rebuild the entire airport to accept other than budget services. The airport, on the global scale, is poor, to put it politely. Not what we want to present to the world...

[Workingman]

Cargo in the holds of passenger aircraft has to go where the passengers go, so there is not much to be done about that. Dedicated cargo aircraft, on the other hand, do not need to be at Heathrow, they could land anywhere and thus free up slots.

Slots are also taken up by flights to holiday destinations and they, by definition, are not hub traffic. A lot of them could be moved to Stanstead and free up slots for the uber important business traveller.

Stanstead does not have to anything like a hub. Moving holiday traffic from Heathrow would simply make it a bigger "leisure" airport. Another big bonus is actually its distance from London, and to the north of it as well - double bonus. It means those of us from the Midlands and North do not have to go anywhere near London. A spur from the M1 at Ridgmont to Bishop's Stortford would also cross the A1(M) - just three junctions. It would make life easy for us, but we cannot have that, can we? And just to add... if hundreds of thousands of us are not going via Heathrow that automatically eases traffic congestion - triple bonus.

[Suff]

I wasn't thinking of the passenger traffic, I was thinking freight. Trying to put freight into the other airports would be a disaster. The roads simply can't cope.

BTW have you flown out of Stansted recently? Especially for holidays. You need to book the lounge at least 2-3 weeks ahead because it's full all the time. All the cafe's and food areas are so full people are standing to try and have a drink and the place is packed to the gunnels. Partly to do with the ridiculous setup and not allowing anyone near the gates any earlier than 40 minutes before, but you couldn't double the traffic through Stansted at peak periods, it would, quite literally, grind to a halt.

I fly every two weeks at the moment. I'm alternating between Stansted and Gatwick at the moment as BA is flying into Limoges from Gatwick. However prices are very high for BA right now so I'm taking the best route. This weekend was out of Gatwick on BA and into Stansted on Ryanair (£300 saved on a BA round trip).

Gatwick south is mobbed most of the time and the lounges are up to £20 more expensive than Stansted. Stansted was a disaster area on Sunday, all weekend it has been a nightmare due to delays. There is simply NOWHERE to go if you are not being forced through to gates or forced out of the baggage carousels and off onto bus or train. The whole airport is set up to suck you in and spit you out. The second it does not work, it's a complete mess.

Right now I'd put Edinburgh before either Stansted or Luton. That's saying a LOT.

[Workingman]

Yes, I have flown out of Stanstead, and yes, I know it has problems. However, it would cost next to nothing in comparison to Heathrow to improve it beyond all recognition.

Actually creating a dedicated cargo hub or even a few hubs is a pretty good idea when you really think about it. There are plenty of ex RAF stations either under care and maintenance or now used for other things, but with their runways and huge hangars available. Think Leeming, North Yorks, Wittering, Northants, Lynham, Wilts.

They are all on or near to the major road network.

Cargo only flights are a growing sector within aviation. Separating them from the cargo/passenger mix helps to future proof our airports to some degree. If we do not act things can only get worse - Heathrow runway 7, Birmingham runway 4....

[Suff]

Well I'd go with that. Scampton is also about to be sold off. That was a Vulcan airfield with the bomber command sizings to it. Not far off the Lincoln by-pass and A46 to the Midlands and up the A15 to the Humber bridge and the M180.

Unlikely that they would go for it thought. There are a whole host of companies which have grown up around the major hubs like Heathrow and they would have to relocate. Never an easy move even if the prime retail sites they would be selling would buy 5 times the same space (or more), in other areas of the country.

I learned a bit about what we do air freight during the Icelandic volcano. To Greece we send urgent priority technical goods and we get back in return.... Raspberries. To East Africa we send out fast moving goods and bring back.... Cut Flowers...

[TheOstrich]

Heathrow runway 7, Birmingham runway 4....

Birmingham is mostly package tours / holiday traffic and in-country connecting flights (Glasgow, Belfast), although it does have a freight hub (not that I can recall it was used much).

They have been talking about a second runway at Birmingham Airport for many years. What they eventually did, several years back, was lengthen the existing runway (which meant diverting the A45 into a short tunnel) so it could take the heavier passenger aircraft (Airbus A380?). And all that meant was the addition of one flight every other day to Dubai by Emirates, and similar to Islamabad by Pakistan Airlines or whatever. The Emirates departure was early afternoon and with apparently a not very substantial rate of climb, was quite a spectacular (and noisy) event viewed from our front garden .....

As a response to Heathrow's third runway, Birmingham Airport have dusted off the second runway proposals again and say they want to increase annual footfall from 25m to 50m by 2050.

It's apparently all about connectivity. Birmingham claims this should be done, because after all Birmingham will have HS2 and a station at the airport. Most people outside Birmingham say you're getting HS2 with a link to Heathrow, what more do you want? It's that sort of chicken / egg argument that really leads one to conclude there simply is no national transport strategy .....

[Suff]

Of course, in our usual obsessive way, we act as if our runways are the only ones in the world and that air traffic to the UK will continue as it is whether or not we do what needs to be done.

Schiphol airport has 6 runways and you can see that they are not stopping.

Schiphol, home base to KLM, attracted 68.4 million travellers, consolidating its lead over Frankfurt and putting it within 1 million of the total at Charles de Gaulle, which is the headquarters of the Dutch carrier’s parent Air France.

When you see what is being said about Heathrow and what is being done to knock Heathrow off it's perch...

London Heathrow remained Europe’s leading airport despite the constraints of only two runways as airlines turned to bigger planes to boost capacity. The U.K. hub isn’t due to get a third strip until 2025 at least.

Amsterdam lifted passenger numbers 7.7 percent in the 12 months, the most among Europe’s top bases, following 9.1 percent growth in 2016. That’s contributed 10.2 million more travellers in just two years, the equivalent of adding an entire airport such as Glasgow’s main hub.

Paris CDG has 4 runways. Orly has 3 runways. If you add Beauvais, which is pretty much like Stansted and Paris has 8 runways. As Gatwick only has one functional runway at any time, London has 6 runways if you count City but City is so small that it can only take very limited aircraft. It's more like Dundee.

You'd have to add Southend to get 6 real runways.

Schiphol has excellent interconnections around the EU and has a large rail hub. Paris also has excellent interconnections and a massive high speed rail hub in Paris, just 45 minutes away. Fly into Paris and you can be in other, harder to get to places, 3-4 hours later.

Paris has the runway capacity of all of London, plus Birmingham and Manchester. It has EU wide interconnection links with other transport, incredible numbers of hotels right on site and continues to grow. Major downsides with Paris are overcrowding, older, poorer terminals and the fact that it takes you a minimum of 10 minutes to taxi to your gate and it is the slowest airport to get off the plane and connect than any other I've ever been to. Oh and the fact that they all speak French, not English doesn't help either.

Heathrow, essentially, is not about how we, in the UK, want to travel. It is about the UK and how the UK is perceived in the world. As we exit the EU, Heathrow remains the largest International hub in the world, the largest transcontinental hub in the world and a prime destination for travellers. Barring a new hub, of the size of Heathrow (which is why I was with Boris on the Thames Estuary), it is Heathrow that has to grow. I'm not opposed to growth in the other airports, but we need to do Heathrow first.

To be honest, if we do see the spaceport in Scotland that we're being promised; it might be better to look much further North for Airport capacity than south in the future. After all Space is the real future and, of course, nobody wants rockets going off in their back yard do they? They're really noisy and pollute like hell.