General Chat

Last week,(allegedly) it was reported, a carrier bag ,suspected at first to be a Drone, was struck by an Aircraft coming into land.

lately two Aircraft were struck by Lightning...........do you think that a move would be beneficial?

and where to?

Those incidents could happen more or less anywhere. Perhaps a drone strike is less likely over the estuary but bird strikes would be more likely.

Basically the airport needs to be North West of London which is where the majority of the traffic originates from. That would minimise the amount of land traffic generated and reduce the amount of transport infrastructure needed.

Windsor Castle is far too close to Heathrow.

Which planning official signed-off the Castle's planning permission? :-D

The pilots have orders to throttle back after take-off when they over-fly Windsor; too many of them have homes there ;-)

If or where ever a new airport was located in the SE, it would have to be far enough away from the established airports so that the flights paths don't clash. It would need flat land but avoiding demolition of large areas of habitation. That would mean farm or green belt land. What with Public Enquiries, Consultation and Planning, it ain't going to happen in our life time!

Boris Island was a stupid idea in the first place. The Thames Estuary marshes are a RSPB reserve. The Birds can't read eviction notices. The Marshes aren't built on for a reason - they are flood plains to protect London.

It probably is in the wrong place but the cost of providing an alternative replacement would be absolutely horrendous. As DetEcTive says, it aint going to happen.

Approach to Heathrow can be from any of four points just outside each corner of Greater London (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7196158.stm ) but in fact the landing sequence actually starts much earlier, for international flights this can be even before crossing the UK coastline. Other airports fit in around Heathrow's needs so if Heathrow were to move to a different location the entire UK ATC paths would need to be re-designed.

Interesting item on today's news was that the CAA wants to change the stacking so that priority is given to aircraft that have passengers making connections, rather than the current method of first come first served.

Sometimes the Lambourne stack is so full that aircraft have to stack over the Dengie peninsular until they are permitted to enter the Lambourne stack.

Manston, in Kent. Perfect place, and already there.

Except that you would need another motorway or two plus a high speed railway to get there.and it has only got one runway.

floods plains make a difference??? :-0 Really ! who knew. Certainly not the people who build houses on them and then complain that the house floods every year and the town, or somebody, needs to do something about it.

Usually the ministry of Transport cause the flood wiped out the road because the houses divined(sp) the water

They are really thinking of moved Heathrow???? INSANE

Why when we are all told we are destroying the planet taking our cars to the supermarket are we being encouraged to board cheap flights for short break or a Stag / Hen do thousands of miles away?
It baffles me why air travel keeps expanding, with video conferencing and instant communication to almost anywhere from your mobile phone. Can only be all those business jollies abroad or out of season fruit we must have. :-D :-D :-D

Look at the Flightradar24 website to see just how much air traffic there is out there.
It's frightening.
And much of it is not essential.

"The pilots have orders to throttle back after take-off when they over-fly Windsor; too many of them have homes there"

They mostly live in and around New Milton, Hants. unless they work for RyanAir in which case they have a sofa share in Barrons Court.

Ryanair don't do Heathrow - the sofa is probably in Harlow. :-)

It is a sad fact of business life that even for SMEs tying up a contract for services with a client in, say, the EU without a lot of to and froing is next to impossible hence all the business flying. That also applies to PLCs and long distance contracts.

The UK economy would sink like a stone without overseas services business hence the close interest in London airport capacity.

LHR is already a major source of air and noise pollution such that serious expansion cannot be legal whatever the promises. Hence Cameron kicking the issue into the New Year ... the only option is a second runway at Gatwick with a fast (maglev?) train connection to LHR. Brave Dave knows that but doesn't fancy a fist fight with BA and its friends.

The airmeals business is all in Hayes. It can service Gatwick but not Prestwick.

ah well if the UK votes brexit it won't have much business left and the issue will go away.

ps: there are those will say why not move the jobs to the north where there are plenty of airline slots. All well and good if you can get people to go there when even ManCity & ManU have problems. The Beeb lost no end of top staff who didn't fancy Salford Quays.As it is, getting an options trader out of Kensington or a software engineer out of Whitechapel is next to impossible let alone the terra incognita beyond the M25.

Maybe one day we will all have the HoloNet and 3D color holograms but no time soon. Even if we all got 50in 4K screens the existing internet could not support them anyway. Then there is the recruitment problem of finding people with long arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFbDgxDh_pU

Maybe if all else fails Leicester. It is in the middle of England, has an airport and a decent football team. It loves trains so much that it is spending millions reconnecting the railway to Nottingham ( steam, single track ). Prob. already in the Greens/LibDem manifesto.