New Third Runway at Heathrow?

[F737MAX 5,585]

23 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

Adding more runways to Heathrow or Gatwick is a bad idea.  Why not build a brand new airport in the Estuary like Boris suggested, then scrap both Gatwick and Heathrow for much needed housing.

What is a bad idea is building a brand new airport on the opposite side of London to most people in the South East of the UK live (extending journey distance and times) due to the following:

- There is no existing transport infrastructure (increasing overall cost of the project);

- The estuary site is near several protected nature habitats where the chance of bird strikes increases massively;

- The presence of the wreck of the S.S. Montgomery in the estuary with 1,400 tons of unexploded explosives on-board with no safe way yet developed to remove them;

- The higher chance of fog, 3 times higher on the estuary than at Heathrow (increasing the incidence of delays);

- The requirement for a massive redrawing of the airspace over Essex, Kent and the North Sea to accomodate a new airport affecting the air corridors to the rest of Europe;

- The huge new housing requirement for airport workers to live within a respectable commuting distance of the new airport.

No, extra runways at Heathrow and/or Gatwick aren't prefect solutions, but they are much, much better than the estuary proposal ever was.

[WotanUK 289]

56 minutes ago, F737NG said:

What is a bad idea is building a brand new airport on the opposite side of London to most people in the South East of the UK live (extending journey distance and times) due to the following:

- There is no existing transport infrastructure (increasing overall cost of the project);

- The estuary site is near several protected nature habitats where the chance of bird strikes increases massively;

- The presence of the wreck of the S.S. Montgomery in the estuary with 1,400 tons of unexploded explosives on-board with no safe way yet developed to remove them;

- The higher chance of fog, 3 times higher on the estuary than at Heathrow (increasing the incidence of delays);

- The requirement for a massive redrawing of the airspace over Essex, Kent and the North Sea to accomodate a new airport affecting the air corridors to the rest of Europe;

- The huge new housing requirement for airport workers to live within a respectable commuting distance of the new airport.

No, extra runways at Heathrow and/or Gatwick aren't prefect solutions, but they are much, much better than the estuary proposal ever was.

Yes, these are good points, but consider that Heathrow requires the bulk of all the Air traffic to fly across London increasing noise and air pollution massively.  Air pollution is already above EU standards around Heathrow, another runway would increase this, even with newer aircraft.

Narita is 40 miles outside Tokyo, very fast transport links are in place and it works very well.  Yes it would increase the cost, but there are already rail links in the area that could be re-used.

3&4 are difficult to comment on, the South East in general is quite prone to Fog, this would only be fixed if the airport was relocated North (something i agree with).

Yes, a 3rd runway will also require a redrawing of the airspace around the South East.

Do you think that the builders of Runway 3 are going to live around Heathrow?  I suspect they will live in temp accommodation, this would be easy to replicate at a new Airport.

Personally I would be looking at building a new airport north of Watford.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

A former Concorde pilot, Jock Lowe, as part of an advisory group advised extending the northern runway by 10,000ft effectively making it two runways with one half for landings and the other half for departures. Thinking outside the box I think it’s called.

Vastly reduced infrastructure changes required but it’s been rejected. It seems a decent proposal.

The third runway is going to route traffic right over Windsor Castle. That will not amuse the incumbent resident. Off with the designers heads!!

[F737MAX 5,585]

15 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

A former Concorde pilot, Jock Lowe, as part of an advisory group advised extending the northern runway by 10,000ft effectively making it two runways with one half for landings and the other half for departures. Thinking outside the box I think it’s called.

The double length northern runway is certainly a novel idea. It's never been implemented anywhere before and is therefore probably unlikely to be developed due to the risk averse nature of aviation.

The best idea for LHR so far, is this less disruptive and cheaper design by the Arora Group.

http://heathrow.thearoragroup.com/western-hub

Quote: "Arora Group’s proposed changes to the design of the terminal and new taxi way system represent a significant opportunity to deliver the expansion at a lower cost [£14.4 bn vs. £31bn] while still providing the same operating capacity for Heathrow, but with a greater than 23% reduction in the site area.

The proposal is based on a new Terminal 6 constructed to the west of Terminal 5 with a remote satellite to be located to the west of the new T6. The proposed T6 is smaller than that shown in HAL’s NWR scheme but will still deliver the required terminal capacity."

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

16 minutes ago, F737NG said:

The double length northern runway is certainly a novel idea. It's never been implemented anywhere before and is therefore probably unlikely to be developed due to the risk averse nature of aviation.

Neither had a supersonic airliner back in the 60s but it took men of vision to conceive the idea of Concorde.

Maybe Mr Lowe is in to something but I accept radical ideas don’t sit easily when so much money is at stake.

Anyway, it’s got to get through a House of Commons vote yet and that is far from certain. Those plans look interesting but everything is complicated by the proximity of the M25.

[W2DR 1,860]

8 hours ago, WotanUK said:

Definitely a British thing.  To be fair, you really don't get the chance to moan in places like China, even when they built Narita they completely railroaded the locals.

Adding more runways to Heathrow or Gatwick is a bad idea.  Why not build a brand new airport in the Estuary like Boris suggested, then scrap both Gatwick and Heathrow for much needed housing.

Not just a British thing. When the addition of a fourth runway at KATL was undertaken in the 1980's there was almost a war between the "must haves" and "don't needs".....

[Chock 17,769]

The solution is simple, it merely requires people in London to acknowledge the fact that the world does not end when you go past Watford. In fact there's this place called the Midlands, which funnily enough is in the middle of the entire country and therefore easier and indeed much fairer too for all the people in the UK to access and is certainly a more sensible place for cargo operations amongst other things, rather than merely suiting those who are MPs who also happen to have a flat - which we all pay for on their fiddled expenses - which is located inside the M25 so they don't have to travel too far when their chief whip insists they actually come in to Parliament for a change, in order to vote on something they are bothered about, invariably an MP pay rise or some such.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2018 by Chock

[Holdit 551]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

The solution is simple, it merely requires people in London to acknowledge the fact that the world does not end when you go past Watford. 

I don't think you're being fair, Chock. Londoners don't think the world ends at Watford - they just think "Up north" starts at Watford. 

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, Holdit said:

I don't think you're being fair, Chock. Londoners don't think the world ends at Watford - they just think "Up north" starts at Watford. 

True, that'll be why they issue a flat caps and whippets on the train up from London when it gets past Guildford.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

2 hours ago, Chock said:

True, that'll be why they issue a flat caps and whippets on the train up from London when it gets past Guildford.

Alan,

Guildford is in Surrey. 

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

On 6/6/2018 at 10:34 AM, aentwis said:

Matt, I think the implication is of increased air traffic in an already congested airspace...

That is going to the case wherever an expansion is built in the greater London area, be it Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, or Heathrow... I am appalled by the huge ground taxi times these mega airport complexes cause, Amsterdam Schiphol being one of the woirst examples in my mind. The Polderbaan takes 15 or more minutes to reach or taxi in from... massive local carbon footprint... Look at Frankfurt too! With Ryanair now operating to Frankfurt Main Airport, they sometimes get vectored onto 25R and then have to taxi all the way across Frankfurt to their parking stands on the other side of the airport on the cargo apron... At least 15 minutes' rolling time there...

A

So your saying that because of the new runway, there will be increased traffic?

I would argue that that won't be the case. It will help alleviate quite a bit of head aches.

Granted, new arrivals and departures should be made to make the new layout efficient. 

[Christopher Low 5,352]

You could argue that a third runway will reduce the amount of time that departing aircraft are sitting on the taxiway, and thereby help to reduce the local carbon footprint...

[Chock 17,769]

35 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Alan,

Guildford is in Surrey. 

I know, it's just that occasionally when I had to get a train back from London to Manchester, I'd have to get one to Guildford and then get one from there if there wasn't one going direct from Euston, which occasionally did happen. More often than not it was one direct though stopping at either Watford or Milton Keynes, either way it was usually a bit of a faff because it would invariably be on a Friday, and if anyone has ever got a train from Euston to Manchester on a Friday, they will know what a pain in the @ss that is. So actually on a more serious note for this topic, if they did consider beefing up an airport in the Midlands, they'd have to improve the train links from London somewhat.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

@Chock, no worries. I thought you might have failed your Geography O Level.

That sounds an horrendous journey. I used to commute from Harrow & Wealdstone to Euston then onwards to Old Street tube station back in the late 60s so you do get used to things. But trains ran properly in those days even under British Railways!

[G-RFRY 1,710]

One has to bear in mind airlines are clamouring for slots at Heathrow, that's  were they want to be and they are the customers.