FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Mildly OT: Runway(s) at Gatwick Airport
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Old Jul 24, 2006 | 6:07 am
  #23  
spotwelder
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: SCL, MCT, LGW and a variety of 1W lounges in between.
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Originally Posted by krug
All very interesting spottie.

When I was in Singapore, the cab driver told me that the road to the airport (you know, the one with all the flowers in the large planters in the central reservation) was actually an emergency runway in case something ha[ppened to the main one.

Is this true?
I think that it is a spare military runway. There are several around and it will serve the military base just to the West of the main airport. Of course, the Swedes are specialists at turning roads into runways. BAE did it once on the M55 with the Jaguar for demonstration purposes. Those of us in the military used to think that the Jaguar needed to taxi all the way to East Germany as its take off run was so long when fully loaded. However, squadron orders never specified which side of the autobahn should be used.
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