Jenbel

deleted

FlyerTalker46423

I thought the post was a joke or trolling. 'Thatcher International Airport' - ho, ho, ho..

alanR

Boris Island & Lord Foster's plans are different plans.

But a better name for it would be "Birdstrike International".

The only question that remains is why this sudden conversion by Number 10 - an attempt to keep Boris as Mayor of London and hence away from Number 10?

Boris Johnson has suggested that a new airport sited in the Thames Estuary could take as little as six years to complete and would not cost the taxpayer anything to build.

Jenbel

There's many a true word said in jest, sadly.

marlborobell

You could call it 'Thatcher-Blair Worldwide Airport' and give offense to both sides equally... (airport code TBW )

(says someone thoroughly PO'ed with the current attempts to sanctify Maggie. State funeral? You've got to be kidding.)

In all seriousness, expanding London's airport capacity is something that will certainly need to be done. Concreting over Hackney Marshes won't exactly be popular. If (and it's a very big if) the bird issue in the estuary can be fixed or worked around, then Foster's idea of an airport at Grain probably makes sense. Boris Island, on the other hand, is way too far out (in both senses of the phrase).

Every time I've thought about this, I've assumed that a small airport at Heathrow would be retained -- probably just Terminal 4 and the south runway. The rest would indeed be developed into a technology park or the like. (Gimpo is still around, Kai Tak isn't, Don Muang is, the old Shanghai is, Tempelhof isn't and Tegel won't be, trying to think of other examples.)

stut

Ah, have you seen this e-petition?

Orly is still there, as is Subang (for limited flights), Fornebu is gone (although the building still exists, as part of the business park that's on its site), Bromma is still on the go and Itami and Haneda are very much there. Croydon Airport is another where the buildings are still there and in the middle of a dreich business park.

emma69

Haven't been on for a couple of weeks but just enjoying a glass of wine by the Thames and had a quick peek in here! Sell shooting licenses for those birds to the city boys to raise revenue, save them going all the way to Scotland for boys weekends!

alanR

Can someone explain what the point is on building a station on HS2 for shuttle trains to Heathrow if Heathrow is going to be replaced by Estuary Airport?

Then again can anyone explain why build HS2 if it's not going to connect into the services for Estuary Airport - or HS1 for that matter?

NickB

Because the vast majority of the users of the service will not be connecting to a flight but rather having London as origin or destination?

Compare with the French TGV network: only a very small fraction of TGVs serve CDG.


The case for high-speed trains is not inexorably linked to airports being on the HS network (even though it would obviously be preferable for it to be the case).

marlborobell

I admit that I haven't seen the latest plans for HS2, but the ones I saw before did include a connection to HS1. And it's almost certain that any estuary airport would include a branch off HS1. The HS2-HS1 connection already exists at the HS1 end -- it's currently just a little single line running down from Camden Road station to the beginning of the tunnel just outside St Pancras. But it was built as a proper grade-separated double-line connection. All that is needed is suitable connectivity between Camden Road and Old Oak Common, which is, I think, planned.

If I were building HS2, I'd ensure that it included a frequent (half-hourly or so) high-speed service Heathrow-Old Oak-Stratford-Ebbsfleet, and if an estuary airport were built, that service would be extended from Ebbsfleet to the airport.

marlborobell

I wondered about this, so I dug a little more deeply into the concept. The short answer is there isn't enough room.

For an airport to be able to increase capacity over Heathrow, it will have to have at least three runways. According to the ICAO, the minimum distance between runways for unimpeded operation is a little under a mile. Which in fact is the distance between Heathrow's runways. And the runways themselves need to be at least a couple of miles long, ideally a bit more than that.

So all in all, to make it worthwhile to replace Heathrow, you're going to need three runways at absolute minimum. (And really, you're going to want to know you can reach four.) So at minimum you need a rectangle roughly three miles long by two miles wide, with the capacity to expand to 3x3 or even 4x3.

If you bulldozed Westfield and everything between Clapton and Leyton (including the stadium and Olympic Village), you'd get a width of maybe a mile and a quarter. So you'd need to flatten all of Leyton and bits of Walthamstow, and somehow I doubt that would be either cheap or popular.

NickB

I don't disagree with any of that. What I was questioning is the assumption that there could not be any value whatsoever in HS2 unless London's main airport is on the HS network. While it is certainly highly desirable, it does not follow from this that this is a sine qua non.

oscietra

A splendid idea! Reduce the bird population while at the same time reducing the demand for domestic travel. You should stand for Mayor!!

The simple solution is to slaughter the birds, and create a better habitat elsewhere for the survivors, well away from the airport.

A little intelligence and not inconsiderable drive, rather than a lily-livered defeatist attitude, should see this sorted in a jiffy.

Foster's Airport plan does look smashing:



In all seriousness, I think Churchill International would be a splendid moniker, particularly given his affiliation with Kent.


While I agree 3-4 runways would be ideal, I'd disagree that it would be needed to increase capacity. LHR is closed midnight-5.30am; simply moving away from centres of population would ensure 24h operation, instantly increasing capacity by 20-25%, even on two runways.

stut

Personally, I find the notion of naming airports after anything but their location to be incredibly unbritish!

(Liverpool Speke, sorry, John Lennon, take note!)

alanR

Also George Best Belfast City.