Got to disagree with those that would argue for a new airport on Maplin or in the more recent proposals in and around the Thames estuary. If only becuase if we'd had an airport in either of those locations, we'd probably have dead passengers, as there is a huge bird problem, which cannot be completely resolved. So it might be prettier, it might even make more sense, but the primary reason for airports is to allow the safe transport of passengers between point A and point B. Neither Maplin nor the other Thames estuary options that I've seen in detail were able to do that, on this particular issue. IIRC from the study that was done, the Cliffe option had a risk three times greater than any currently existing UK airport - that's a pretty large differential when we're talking risks to aircraft.

That's why I was laughing at the TCPA paper, as they completely ignored this aspect. They even claimed that stuff like this hadn't been studied....