Heathrow expansion

Shame. I would have preferred an extra runway at Gatwick for purely selfish reasons, namely:

1. Often having to wait ages for take-off at Gatwick and on each occasion hearing the pilot blame Gatwick’s single runway serving planes both landing and taking off.

2. Even after twenty years living in the area, the noise from planes being stacked into holding patterns waiting to land at Heathrow, seemingly directly above South London from 4.30am still bothers me, particularly at the weekends.

3. Increased pollution for millions of Londoners. Presumably air quality will suffer even further with increased traffic that a third runway will inevitably bring. Perhaps some of the inhabitants of West Sussex may be relieved with this decision, perhaps both of them…

4. Seems a bit one sided to have three runways at one London airport and to have only one at the next largest one.

On the other hand and from an economic perspective, I can understand the argument for maintaining a hub airport in the UK and this status diminishing at Heathrow without further development.

Certainly a difficult decision whichever way you look at it.

It was better than doing nothing.in my view, though of course it has been approved before so nothing will probably still happen for a while yet. I wouldn’t bet against another runway at Gatwick also. From the announcement:

Meanwhile, the government wants to see the continued prosperity of the UK’s second busiest airport, and the world’s busiest single runway airport, Gatwick. Its continued success will drive competition in the sector, which is good for passengers and the prosperity of the nation, drawing inward investment, trade and growth.

So following on from our poll, which seems to suggest that as a community we’d like more capacity at the airport which is easiest for us to get to, the government has announced that they will support a third runway for Heathrow.

I thought a topic here to discuss how much this matters to us would be a good one.

My question - is everyone happy that we’re likely to have a substantial increase on the 472,067 “flight movements” (I think that means takeoffs and landings) at Heathrow within the next 10 years.

Does anyone else worry about the chances of a plane falling out of the sky over the country’s largest city and think that maybe a Thames Estuary airport and a gradual winding down of Heathrow would have been a better idea?

Completely agree but this would require Government funding and they are trying to get this done mostly via the private sector.

I read an article discussing how Gatwick mainly served short haul holiday destinations, while Heathrow had a far larger number of long hall flights to emerging markets (important for post-Brexit trade, blah, blah, blah) and Heathrow also is used to export Billions of £s worth of high value goods (enabled due to the existing goods infrastructure to LHR, which is missing for Gatwick). The arguments were backed up by figures and were convincing.

Most interestingly, the article suggested expanding Birmingham airport after LHR, which does make sense. If the Government is serious about the Northern Powerhouse (Teresa has stated that she is), then airport expansion north of London is a must.

Gatwick makes more sense as the east-west flight path goes over a less populated area. But while South Londoners may prefer Gatwick expansion, it would not be quite so good for the rest of the country, which would need to travel further to access Gatwick.

I suspect that Brett is correct that Gatwick will expand anyway, and there really ought to be enough demand for both airports to expand. But I would also like to see a high speed rail connection between the two airports so that the two busiest airports become a single hub. However, the cost would be a little high.

I may be wrong, but the Airports Commission I think addressed capacity throughout the UK though the addition of a runway for London/SE was the headline issue.

A few years ago I was at a conference on London Infrastructure at which then Mayor Boris Johnson spoke. He joked with the completion of HS2 stage one that it would be reasonable to rename Birmingham International as London Birmingham Airport.

Though perhaps doable? It is only 25 miles between the two as the crow flies. Tunnelling?

Crossrail 1 cost £14bn, Crossrail 2 is projected to cost £30bn

Heathwick Express could be quickly estimated to cost about the same as Crossrail 2 - with more tunnelling but fewer stations or integration with existing networks.

Cost of new runway at Heathrow £18bn. Cost of new runway at Gatwick £9bn.

It seems less workable when you consider that for £2,000 you can get a helicopter transfer between the airports. £30bn would pay for 15 million passenger transfers by helicopter!

Tunneling 25 miles is not likely to happen due to exorbitant cost. There is a proposal, backed by Hounslow council, to run a service from Waterloo to Heathrow:
http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/index/council_and_democracy/consultations/heathrow_southern_rail_consult.htm

Now linking the Brighton line with the Windsor line might be doable but am not sure where (or whether) there would be capacity for this. (Where Crofton Park line crosses Brighton main? LOL)

Whether the Waterloo service gets the nod or not, I wonder whether when Crossrail links to Heathrow, with extra runway and terminal 6, we may find it just as easy to get there as Gatwick, especially if Southern get their way to ax the direct services to East Croydon.

Today’s the big day. A mere twenty months later.

Credit due to Greg hands who has given up his Ministerial post so he is able to represent his constituents as he had promised.

No doubt Boris Johnson found himself between a rock and a hard place insofar as keeping his job as ForSec or keeping his resolute promise to his constituents. Perhaps they’ll have forgotten when the next election is held in just over four years.

I couldn’t see how our MP was planning to vote but have tweeted her to find out.

Ironically a 3rd runway will mean fewer planes flying over FH as the new one is further North so we wouldn’t be under the flight path when they use it for landings.

Would it though? I thought the extra runway was to increase capacity not reduce the load on the existing two. I imagine that could happen in the short term, but would wonder how long before LHR was at full capacity again. And then what?

We’ll build another one at Gatwick

Yes you’re probably right - they’ll land them in parallel on 2 runways I suppose.

Better get the proposal in now if it’s going to be built before 2050.

Unbelievable decision in this day an age in a western economy. I’ve read somewhere (was it in this forum) that the noise caused by this airport is already now affecting more people than all other major airports in Europe combined…

At least seeing Boris quit over this would have been the nugget in the poo but then he pulled off his stunt.

4 posts which were starting to meander into political territories have been split to a new topic within #general-politics : Boris vowed to lie in front of Heathrow bulldozers… So why did he miss the vote?

As newbie on this forum and yes from Miriam Lodge hence the user name. Heathrow expansion is more of a ridiculous idea than the hs 1&2 rail links put together the logistics of our small Islands as no needs for either. The nation is in a housing and social care crisis the need of both are paramount to the future of not only your community but the nations well being people don’t need faster trains or more capacity in the air line industry. Every human being should have the right to decent Affordable accommodation before these grandees schemes of wealth creation for the already rich.

this is moving into off topic territory, but if you build a high speed rail link to the capital, it will increase the commutable area of people working in the capital, so there will be some people who move out of the capital, and still commute in, which in turn frees up housing. Also it means that people who don’t already live in the capital but want to work here, don’t necessarily have to move right into the centre.
back to Heathrow - it is already running at or near capacity, unless they increase the allowable flight times (which is a none starter), we will be stagnating. A bigger airport brings in multiple benefits, especially considering that on leaving the EU we’ll be opening up in many more markets across the globe.

Two good points.

For instance I once heard BoJo suggest that once HS2 was completed, Birmingham International could reasonably become London Birmingham airport.

And I agree. Heathrow expansion could only a short term fix. I wish our governments (of any colour) had ambition and built the new airport that London needs.

Interestingly, Vicky Foxcroft (Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford) was one of the few inner London MPs that voted for expansion. I guess it’s a slightly separate issue, but do we know if she is aware about the concerns by many of her constituents about aircraft noise and if she is, what makes her think that despite this she has the mandate to support a project that enables more aircraft to fly across London including her own constituency?

It’s a pity Vicky (and other local MPs) don’t get involved in online forums like this in order to gauge the opinions of their constituents.

What’s the feeling on Heathrow expansion?

The London Assembly is unanimously against Heathrow expansion. Caroline Pidgeon who now chairs on transport issues seems to have a pretty good handle on things.
https://www.carolinepidgeon.org/node/1656

In 2002, Foxcroft became an officer at the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union(AEEU), continuing through the merger of the AEEU into Amicus in 2001, and through the merger of Amicus into Unite the Union in 2007. She was a research officer from 2002 to 2005; a political officer from 2005 to 2009, and a finance sector officer from 2009 until 2015.[5]

I imagine that her string union connections had a hand in her decision.

Also, I doubt aircraft noise is a great issue for her constituents.

Hi found this petition and signed it, so if you agree then sign and post all over the net

Hardly, she makes two assertions about “myths” that I have never heard anyone raise; makes a valid point about genuine negatives of the development; and concludes by saying that we can do a general something, but fails to say how.

Not my MP, but I believe it is a very big issue for many people in her constituency. Heathrow aircraft merge for their final approach over Brockley. If she was my MP I would like to know more about her reasons. See for example this account - and from talking with people campaigning on the issue in Brockley I do not think things have significantly changed - they can only worsen with another runway.
http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/2014/03/john-stewart-blog-doing-nothing-about-noise-at-heathrow-is-not-an-option/

sorry that was just a press statement about the motion. the full wording of the motion which all members voted for is rather more detailed.

https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/assembly-opposed-to-heathrow-airport-expansion

I voted other, as on the one hand I support airport expansion on a general level, but think that in this area we should expand Gatwick, but along with this we should be building a high speed rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick - thus allowing Heathrow and Gatwick to act as one larger international hub/interchange.

One thing I’d like to see more of is businesses justifying international travel. I don’t travel internationally regularly in my job but I do come across a lot of people that do and my opinion is that in about 80% of these cases they don’t physically need to make the trip - they could achieve their objectives via telephone / video conference etc. The technology is there now that I can’t understand why business travel is still so prevalent. While I don’t want to stray into politics I do think this is a failure of western governments to actually start actively holding businesses to account on their environmental record and carbon footprint. Perhaps instead of looking to expand airport capacity we should be looking to reduce air travel.