This is all true. However, depending on what rail links were put in place, it might well be easier for me, in west London, to get to and from an up-graded Birmingham airport than it would for me to get to and from an airport in the Thames Estuary.

I am confident that nobody would consider building a new hub airport without very good rail links. Stansted or Thames Estuary hubs would make no sense at all without this.

Not from many if not most parts of London, including Central London.

But good luck to the politicians who want to get re-elected by getting a few million Londoners to schlep to Stansted.

Wrong. Given a high-speed rail link, utilising the existing HS1 infrastructure, it would actually be faster to get to Stansted, from most of Central London, than it is to get to Heathrow today.

A high-speed, express service could easily get from St. Pancras to Stansted in < 25 minutes, almost as fast as the HEX is now. Remember that St. Pancras is much more central and better connected than Paddington!

In addition to the High Speed Express, you could have a Crossrail service that operates non-stop after Stratford, giving frequent direct service from any station on the central Crossrail route.

Yeah, what do I know, having lived in Kensington for over 11 years. :rolleyes:
Neither the HS1 nor Crossrail are well located for a large part of Central London. It took me 25min from my home in Kensington to T5. In that time I couldn't even get to King's X.

I'll say it again: for many if not most parts of Central London and much of the rest of London, Crossrail and HS1 are in the wrong place for a lot of Londoners. HS1 indeed is entirely useless for the majority of Londoners when it comes to getting to airports. Similarly, Crossrail will do nothing for a lot of people in getting to any airport quicker.

I'll say again that I wish any politician who makes Londoners go to STN instead of LHR or LGW luck with getting re-elected.

I'm sorry, the reason why I called it a 'perception' is because Londoners are positively spoon fed airport access, and then complain about how hard it is to get to STN.

(And I know you said relatively - that just proves my point though ;)).

Try living someplace where you are 50 or 100 (or more) miles from the nearest airport, and your only option is by car and then complain to me... ;)

This is what gets on my nerves!

Its Londoners who complain about LHR and its noise yet wont fly from anywhere else!!!!!!!! (albeit LGW which Sussexers endlessly complain about but use frequently).

Ahem! It's only some who complain about LHR, usually the ones that went to live nearby when it was already there...

Well to the average Brit who isnt as aviation minded as we are it will be greatly insignificant to them compared to other issues such as unemployment, education, health care, pensions, taxes etc etc etc so it probably wont affec most peoples voting choices.

Plus I support STN expansion now as the best option. Add three new 4000 metre runways, a couple of vast new terminals and a super fast rail links to Saint Pancras or Liverpool Street, and a spur to HS2 and we shall have a great national hub. I agree it will take no more than a 25 minute rail ride into London to make it work but it IS possible. It will be Britain's Charles de Gaulle (only much nicer cause CDG is a dump, but runways and capacity wise it will be). It could also be a cargo hub as well.

Plus an enlarged STN will be a proper Hub on one site ONLY so none of this Heathwick nonsense will happen which will make transfer passengers rush to AMS, CDG, DXB and FRA instead (look at what a mess Montreal was).

It will be significantly cheaper than a BRAND NEW airport cause quite a bit of the infrastructure is already in place though a lot will need to be added. And it is much more long term than 3rd runway cause lets face it even 3 runways is not enough for a world player hub airport (considering AMS and most US Airport have more than 4).

I was talking about Londoners, by far the largest city in the country and therefore a biiiig voter pool. What everyone here also seems to forget is that a great many of people in and around London fly on business. To pretend STN is anywhere as suitable as a hub as LHR is, is frankly fanciful. We're not talking bucket and spade travel here.

Good on you, but don't take it the wrong way if I say that your support doesn't quite overwhelm me...

Wonderful comparison, especially if you have to qualify it straight away as not quite being like that in fact. CDG is a nice example of what we don't need.

I've said it before: you just need to bulldoze over Slough and you can expand LHR as much as you like. I can't imagine anyone losing sleep over Slough! :D

Yeah, good luck in getting the idiots that now complain about LHR expansion to keep schtum when you want to expand STN into a massive hub while getting hammered from the other side by the many of us who don't want to schlep to STN for our travel.

How many Londoners do you think actually fly from LHR on a regular enough basis for this to be a major concern in their lives?

The *average* Londoner probably flies mostly for leisure, maybe 2 or 3 times a year if that, and doesn't care what airport they fly from as long as they're getting a good fare.

When it comes to LHR, 1% of the population are doing 90% of the flying. A much smaller voter pool than those who would oppose Heathrow expansion on environmental grounds.

More than you would think, but you also missed the point that there is a lot of business in London for whom a hub is important and many Londoners work for those businesses. There will be a much higher proportion of people in a city like London for whom this is an important issue compared to the rest of Britain.

STN has empty land around it to expand into and if it became a hub then it would not be as you said 'bucket and spade travel' at STN but proper hub traffic.

You said Londoners wont tolerate an airport so far out of town. But is a 25 minute train ride not barable for Londoners? Considering many cities have their hub airports out of town why cant Londoners cope with this? considering most of them moan about all the noise and a lot of people in London support the Thames Estuary Airport for noise reasons.

Also most Londoners barely use LHR. The average Londoner may go on holiday once a year but usually to a bucket and spade destination from LTN, LGW or indeed STN. Therefore most Londoners are used to travelling out of town for a flight.

Perhaps you are grouping the well off high flyers are 'most' Londoners whilst these high flying LHR using businessman probably make up under 1% of Londoners.

Also demolishing Slough and building runways over it may be a funny idea but is is no way feasible. If Britain wants a multi runway hub to compete with the likes of Atlanta or Dubai on a size for size basis Heathrow is not feasbible, only mass expansion of STN or Boris Island are feasible for this.

Exactly, its not like Londoners use LHR every week so this is a huge issue for them, aside from the LHR workers most Londoners probably dont care.

STN is a lot further than 25mins away and will remain so even with a high speed link. After several posts you still don't seem to have caught on to the fact that London is a very big city and therefore the majority of Londoners will first need to get to your connecting station. From where I used to live (within zone 1!), Liverpool Street station was already about 45 minutes away, never mind the time it takes to then get to STN. Shifting a STN connection to King's X or St Pancras really doesn't make much of a difference. The advantage of LHR and to a lesser extend LGW is that depending on where in London you are there are a variety of ways to get to it, including - critically - the tube in case of LHR. For STN that is just not the case. STN is nowhere near London, it's as simple as that.

Really? :rolleyes: So, you don't think one of the major cities in the world has the need for a proper airport to support its citizens and its businesses (where the majority of those citizens and many of the regions surrounding it work)? Business services are the largest single employment sector in London, with a quarter of all jobs. More than half of these jobs are high value law, accounting, consultancy, etc. Then there is the finance sector with again a large proportion of jobs in high value positions. Amongst the other major London job sectors are the media industry and tourism. All of these are sectors with high value, regular air travel profiles for a large part of the work force. Most of the people using LHR are not business high flyers, they are normal level staff. I used to run an innovation department and most of my staff (at all levels) would be flying out regularly to all kinds of meetings and events.

You seem to confuse world cities like London, and their businesses, with some provincial town.

Frankly, if you didn't understand that the Slough reference was a joke, then I don't think there is much hope for the rest of this discussion...

London needs a major hub. LHR is its present hub. It makes a lot of sense to give it the expansion it needs so badly. People and businesses are already located and geared towards it and it does not require massive new funding or entirely new transport infrastructure. If the politicians had the courage and the long term focus needed, it could have been done years ago. Instead, we'll continue to discuss fantasy projects and other unsatisfactory solutions until the cows come home. Nothing of any of this is going to happen and the UK will simply gradually see its hub status eroded further and further and taken over by the continent.

And I'll say again: the green Taliban that fulminates against LHR expansion will show itself wherever else you try to put in a new or enlarged airport.