Something i just cant get into my head,

The conservatives and Lib Dems are proposing High Speed rail as an alternative. Are they stupid or something?

Heathrows current capacity is 400K take offs/landings per year (give or take), the new runway will add an additional 300K, now do they tories and lib dems reckon that this extra capacity is all for domestic flights or something?

A high speed rail link will not get you to New york or dubai or moscow or delhi or anywhere away from this island!

We are a small(ish) island country, we are certainly lucky that we have a strong economy and we should have heathrow as a big hub with high speed trains (im talking French TGV style) running from there to the likes of manchester, glasgow, birmingham etc etc. This surely would be much better idea.

The third runway will allow extra capacity and allow linking more places to the London and by extension the UK.

Also I reckon BA future fleet renewal will all be large twin engine aircrafts because our goverment will put unfair restrictions on what kind of aircrafts operate at heathrow (due to enviromentalists) and because BA is heathrow based, it will have no choice but to abide by them.

BTW, the reason US/middle east based airlines can operate into the likes of manchester and birmingham and glasgow is because they operate from the hub to these destinations in a similar way that BA operate from LHR to phoenix, philladelphia, tampa, baltimore etc etc