So the Airports Commission has backed a third runway at Heathrow. Personally I’m strongly in favour of a third runway at Heathrow, but it’s going to be politically interesting.

Cameron ruled out a third runway in 2010 saying “no ifs, no buts”.

Boris Johnson has long campaigned against the third runway.

I hope that they do what I believe is right for the country and build the third runway as recommended.

The only sensible option was the one which was never considered; no expansion in airport capacity and a planned reduction over the long term.

perhaps the not putting all the UK’s capacity in London might not be a bad idea.

I will avoid flying through London at all costs, as a transit airport it’s just annoying.
Last time I came back flying in and out of Manchester was much better.

It’s a weak choice for sure. I’d much rather have seen a bolder, long-term solution.

The voters round Datchet must be Labour, is all I can think!

Have you ever been to Datchet? It’s awash with retired colonels and flagpoles in gardens.

They’re obviously not bothered about the residents of the grandest house nearby.

Boris Island FTW.

The problem with Boris Island being:

it would be no bloody use at all for the rest of the country.

Getting to Heathrow is a pain in the arse. Getting to an island in the Thames estuary, the wrong side of London would be considerably more painful.

(anyone not living in London may as well fly to Frankfurt, than travel to Boris Island)

Heathrow is better placed and better connected than any of the alternatives. To those saying build capacity further north: Are Manchester etc full at the moment?

The ideal solution IMO would be a new massive hub airport soemwhere close to, but NW of london with a link into the HS2 line for fast acess to London and Birmingham and easy connections to M40 and M1.

Given that is not going to happen a 3rd runway at heathrow is the only solution. Boris islands is only any good for London, it is so out of the way and alkward to get to even for the rest of the south let alone the rest of the country. Ditto Gatwick and that does not solve the international hub probelem. Ditto expanding manchester for example, unless you mega expaned it to be bigger than heathrow as it would have to be a interantional hub but then you still need to get most of the pssengers down to London. As nice as manchester is it is not one of the most important international cities in the world.

So build more at heathrow and continue to push capacity through there or push the capacity onto other places, Manchester is well situated and could take more if the London central model got sacked off. With all of this a build it and they will come thing exits just most of the population doesn’t exist in London.

Getting to Heathrow is a pain in the arse.

I appreciate it isn’t good for everyone but Heathrow has good access for a pretty high proportion of the country.

Manchester is not full to capacity however it’s due to have its Terminals realigned to improve capacity. Then it should be able to handle 50 million passengers per year and hopefully overtake Gatwick as the second busiest Airport in the UK.
It also doesn’t use both it’s runways all day as Runway 2 is shut between 1030 and 1430 and 2000-0500 unless needed for emergencies or if it starts to get busy.

It currently handles 23 million passengers a year and has good connections. Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore for the far east and middle east. And Chicago, New York, Philidelphia, Orlando and Miami for the west. Plus the majority of the major European hubs.

Would much rather fly through Manchester than Heathrow, a much nicer experience.

borris island would be a nightmare to get to, can you imagine the effect on the M25!!

weve just moved from brentford, not directly underthe flightpath but still very intrusive noise wise, from 5-30am til midnight, 24/7

the effects of noise pollution on mental health, school attainment etc are well doccumented
and air pollution shortens 1000s of lives and costs the NHS millions every year
and yet we build spangly new accademies next to A roads and motorways and funnel millions of planes over the most densely populated parts of the country

a blow for the inhabitants of hounslow, kew, richmond, datchet etc (and yes those areas are as Tory as they come (well except hounslow!)

Birmingham, as ever, is the real answer. Expand that, add in a requirement for a fast, non-stop train service into Euston and you’re sorted.

But given that wasn’t going to happen, ever, Heathrow is the least bad solution. It’s not great to get to but it’s the easiest of all the London airports for the majority of the rest of the country. But, as this very interesting article from the BBC shows, I doubt this will happen either.

soemwhere close to, but NW of london

There’s still a small “memorial” at Cublington Spinney, near Leighton Buzzard, that commemorates success in defeating the plans for a new airport there years ago; they went for expansion of Stansted instead. This time I believe they looked at a site near Thame. Both of these would meet your criteria and link in with HS2/E-W rail link but the draw of Heathrow seems to be inexorable.

nickjb – Member

I appreciate it isn’t good for everyone but Heathrow has good access for a pretty high proportion of the country.

that’s my point.

Heathrow can be a pain, Boris Island? 2 hours more travelling each way, if not more.

I appreciate it isn’t good for everyone but Heathrow has good access for a pretty high proportion of the country.

It’s at the other end of the country to the rest of the population
It’s on a really busy motorway
If you want to go on the train you have to get to reading the south coast or London

It’s probably easier to go to your local airport and fly there.

Last time I did heathrow it took about 30 mins to get from the hotel to the terminal as it was on the other side. It’s not that easy to get to.

I still don’t understand why we need to increase our airport capacity. There’s just no real reason.

Rachel

Because it makes rich people richer.

A lot of the heathrow expantion is to do with keeping a internation airport hub in the uk. If you are gogin to have a international hub, it needs to be easily excessable to a a international city. I’d personaly love to seee more focus put into the rest of the country and away from London but when it comes to something like this the airport need to be lonon based, but with the best possible conections possible to the rest of the country. Given that there would not be a new airport Heathrow is the only option.

“least bad” option sure.

But the M25 can’t cope between 0700-1100 and 1600-1900 every day as is. You can’t force ‘000’s of passengers heading to Heathrow to catch a Bus or Train, most travel there by car/taxi. So if you want a 3rd runway expand the M25 too.
Trains in/out of London are frequent yes, but a large % of passengers come in from all over the country, whats the solution then?

I’m of the opinion that folks living West of Town are increasingly forced upon to accept it’s them that gets the brunt of any small increase, never mind large. It’s oppressive the amount of planes dropping in over Windsor, the height and noise is unacceptable IMO.

An increase in economic growth is a poor argument for expansion, I don’t think shifting the expansion to B’ham or Manc is the answer either as you just move the problem elsewhere. Short term it might be ok to do that, but then they will be asked to increase capacity again and again and they’ll be in the situation Heathrow finds itself now.

Tough one.

And I still don’t understand why folks live out West 😐

50million passengers a year, each paying what? £20 taxes?

that’s a billion quid in tax, from 1 airport.

nice little earner that.

more passengers = more tax.

I still don’t understand why we need to increase our airport capacity. There’s just no real reason.

Agreed. Aviation fuel is going to become an increasingly scarce resource with no plausible alternative available and we should be working harder to justify the use of it not increasing its use.

convert – Member
Aviation fuel is going to become an increasingly scarce resource with no plausible alternative available and we should be working harder to justify the use of it not increasing its use.

i keep banging on about this, because no-one’s listening:

There is plenty of oil in the World, enough for centuries, we’re not going to run out.

the next few decades will see the meaningful end of the easy stuff, that squirts out of the ground when an Arab drills a hole.

We’re already extracting oil from tar-sands, for less than $100/barrel.

i’ll let you google the total amount of oil available in tar-sands.

I still don’t understand why we need to increase our airport capacity

Demand basically. More people are flying and a lot of airports are close to capacity in their existing form. Some are restricted by runway space, others by apron space, other but terminal space but most are restricted in some way.

Off the back of this, the London airports are already big and already at capacity. You can, and should, argue that therefore we can take the pressure off them by flying from somewhere else but right now people want to fly to/from London so that’s where the capacity will be put.

There is plenty of oil in the World, enough for centuries.

Yeah you just need to get it out the ground for a price that it’s worth burning it for.

You can, and should, argue that therefore we can take the pressure off them by flying from somewhere else but right now people want to fly to/from London so that’s where the capacity will be put.

Chicken and egg, build it there and people will have to go there. As I said I pick flights that don’t go through Heathrow, the middle eastern hubs and all pick up from other airports and have a lot of cheap space and capacity.

There is plenty of oil in the World, enough for centuries.

Did George Dubya tell you that?

This debate will only be meaningful on our deathbeds and by then if you are wrong it will be too late. Not for us clearly, we can spunk the stuff away without a care, but future generations mights be a bit peeved that we used it flying businessmen around the world to have face to face conversations that could have been done virtually and so holidaymakers could get a nice tan.

With a 3rd runway, presumably the currently good access to Heathrow would have 50% more traffic on it, making it less good.

Just flew to/from South America for work. Based in Newcastle my options were Heathrow, Paris or Amsterdam. So flew to/from heathrow. Would you prefer the large amount of airport tax and long distance international tourism (which was most of the flight) was dissuaded from coming to the UK.

No-one other than Mancunians want to fly to/from Manchester as it’s not where tourists want to visit, the choice of flights is limited and for a large amount of non-charter flights you can just fly from your local airport to a major hub and get a larger choice of flights.

convert – Member

This debate will only be meaningful on our deathbeds

wrong.

it’s a meaningful debate now.

This is what we’re doing to Alberta to get at the oil-sand:

(you basically have to dig it up, and then boil it – it’s a disaster, and that’s before we consider the impact on climate change of a world with ‘too much’ oil)

for years we’ve been told that we’re going to run out of oil in our lifetimes. and that’s been seen as a limit to the amount of damage we can do.

“it’s ok, we’ll have no choice, we’ll stop acting like comedy bad guys from a poor episode of captain-planet because we’ll run out of oil”

We had-slash-have hundreds of billions of barrels of easy oil. But when we go looking for difficult oil, we find trillions of barrels. Trillions.

We have to choose to stop ****ing the planet, or not…

it matters now, not on our deathbeds.

Strange – haven’t got time now to ‘google’ properly but what I’ve found so far does not back up your theory.

Conventional estimates are we have 1.3 trillion barrels of ‘provable’ reserves. That is estimated to last 40-55 years on current consumption predictions. The latest estimates are that the total reserves which now include the recently added tar sands estimates (200 billion) and the as yet undiscovered reserves is 2 trillion. Not the 1.3 plus an extra 2 trillion – 2 trillion all up. That is not centuries and centuries of use at current levels.

Your argument is a bit bipolar though. My original post was that I don’t think we should be encouraging more aviation as it’s a waste of a finite resource; you respond with don’t be daft it’ll last for centuries; and now you are saying that dragging up the last of the reserves will trash the planet. Which side of the fence are you – encourage or discourage use of petrochemicals with gay abandon?

Strange – haven’t got time now to ‘google’ properly but what I’ve found so far does not back up your theory.

It’s probably the 3 gazillion barrels from the Scottish election

We have to choose to stop ****ing the planet, or not…

This.

Rather than wasting load of money on HS2 or increasing airport capacity and destroying thousands of acres of countryside and adversely affecting the lives of millions, invest in technology. There are a great many parts of the country where network provision is pitiful and / or very expensive. Improve that and reduce the costs and you open up the possibility of virtual meeting via video conferencing etc. There are occasions when physical attendance at a meeting can add value but embracing alternatives has to be the way forward.

Or we can keep destroying the planet to move more people from A – B needlessly and back again.

discourage.

but we all have a role to play in that. if you think this matters, then you have to choose to fly less (among other things)

i don’t know your working, but we use about 70million barrels per day. if there’s 2 trillion barrels left before the world runs dry, then that’s 80 years.

2 Trillion is probably an under-estimate, As you’ve said, it’s based on the trillion or so barrels of easy stuff we have left*, plus 1 more trillion if we include the much more abundant difficult stuff.

(*Saudi Arabia + Venezuela add up to at least 500 billion barrels)

that’s 80 years assuming we take no steps away from oil, but we already have. Our consumption of those ’80 years worth’ will not be a straight line down to zero in 80 years time.

Both Heathrow and Gatwick are privately owned so why does the government need to get involved. Let them both apply for planning permission in the normal way and see what happens. Each should be looked at individually and allowed to go ahead if it passes the planning rules. Granted the government might be needed to approve planning permission but I don’t see why it should be one or the other.

Personally I think they should allow the building of a brand new airport somewhere in the same region as Heathrow but where the main flight path in right across the centre of London and the associated air pollution. I agree that more flights should be from airports further north and not all centred around London but we do have to accept that this country and establishment are all completely London centric and just don’t think realises anyone (the majority of the population) actual live outside of the M25!!

What I find more annoying is that we never seem to have a long term, say 20yr, fully integrated plan for the country and how we might want it changed or structured. For the life of me I don’t understand why we don’t have along term plan to move business and people out of the south east, especially as the population is constantly increasing.

I’d imagine that the planning application for a third runway at Heathrow might put a bit of pressure on the planning department at Hounslow Council, or wherever, and get referred up to the Secretary of State for a decision…

Both Heathrow and Gatwick are privately owned so why does the government need to get involved.

As a country a strategy of airport capacity is very important. Making sure that you don’t end up with over capacity in the wrong place or miss a chance to do the right thing is important.

Personally I think they should allow the building of a brand new airport somewhere in the same region as Heathrow

Why? Crowded air space, same problem with connectivity and why would you choose Diet Heathrow over Full Fat Heathrow.

What I find more annoying is that we never seem to have a long term, say 20yr, fully integrated plan for the country and how we might want it changed or structured.

exactly why the government should be involved – see your first point

Any makor infrastructure plan shirley MUST go through the Gov’t approval system.

As for the Oil revenue, I agree with ahwiles, easy oil is running out, difficult oil is there in barrel loads. The question is/should be .. do we start decimating the Earth to get hold of it.

HS2 should be scrapped pronto..

difficult oil is there in barrel loads

and the point being it’s not in the barrels

As a frequency business flyer I’m in favour of Heathrow getting a 3rd runway, it’s the only well run airport in the country. Gatwick seems to be run by amateurs who can’t cope with the single runway they already have.