New London Airport - On an Island?

[The Rok]

British government mulls 'Boris island' airport: report

Johnson, a member of Cameron's Conservative party, has proposed the building of a new airport on an artificial island in the Thames -- dubbed "Boris island" -- to the less populated east of London.

Personally I think London has enough airports already. I think more airlines should start using Gatwick as a hub for international travel and that would free up slots at Heathrow for London business.

 

[Mal]

I thought when this was first mooted that major concerns regarding bird strikes were raised.

Anyway, I wish the environmentalists would stay quiet and allow additional runways at existing airports...

 

[anat0l]

This idea has been alluded to before. Not sure about the island concept, but the whole idea of building it at that kind of place was mooted.

There are environmental sensitivities in the area which I think are going to make building an airport there impossible (estuaries easily lend themselves to that). Not to mention creating artificial islands is going to draw similar ire anyway (where exactly are you going to get the landfill to make the islands...) As Mal alluded, bird strikes were also an issue (and you just can't kill all the bird population there...)

The other London airports aren't exactly full (except LCY is already getting full too), but most of the capacity problems will be in the London airspace, not slots on the ground (i.e. not how many planes can land or take-off, but purely just how many planes you can have hovering around London at any given time). That is starting to peak out, too. You could kill off the curfew at the moment, but curfew times don't usually attract a lot of pax (the new demand will probably be filled with LCCs who will fly at that time for the sake of lower fees, hence driving demand in that way), and in any case if we look at SYD we can attest to how successful politically it would be to eliminate a curfew...

London's a basketcase, in short. Encouraging the growth of regional hubs, especially to avoid London airspace, with high-speed connections to London is probably a better idea, though most people of course won't like it (why do I have to fly into bl**dy East Midlands then take a train to London when I could've just flown straight to London). London could probably also stiffen the slot ballots and force higher bidding for slots so that'll kill off the small fish who are just in London because they want to fly to London, freeing up slots for those airlines who will be prepared to put money where their mouth is. But that's probably anti-competitive, killer for LCCs, will force up airfares and won't make many people (passengers) very happy.

 

[thewinchester]

The problems with London basin airport planning go back as far as 1943 when an additional airport in the Thames Estuary was considered. Later during the 1960's, the then British Airports Authority realised that both LHR and LGW were going to exceed their planned capacity in the near future; and as such an administrative remedy was made - thus how STN came into being.

We then fast forward to 68' with the establishment of the Roskill Commission, which was established to:

... enquire into the timing of the need for a four-runway airport to cater for the growth of traffic at existing airports serving the London area, to consider the various alternative sites, and to recommend which site should be selected.

The site known as Maplin Sands also came about due to much local NIMBYism from locals in Cublington, which was selected by Roskill as the preferred site after pioneering cost benefit analysis which considered over 78 possible sites for a new airport. However, the Maplin Sands site fell over after development costs became too high combined with the effects of the 73/74" oil crisis. Further projections at this time also indicated that LHR & LGW should handle traffic until at least 1990.

You can get more background on the issue of a Thames Estuary airport, and specifically the Thames Hub island proposal at Wikipedia. There's also a good background on the whole issue of London airport planning on JStor, specifically:
Airport Planning in the Context of the Third London Airport, R. C. Fordham, The Economic Journal, Vol. 80, No. 318 (Jun., 1970), pp. 307-322. Accessible for free via the National Library eResources Gateway at http://www.jstor.org.rp.nla.gov.au/stable/pdfplus/2230120.pdf)

 

[elbarto]

The Thames Estuary got canned because the French and Belgians felt it would impinge on their airspace. The simplest (in technical terms) and cheapest solution would be to build another runway at LHR or LGW. But the NIMBY culture in the UK will ensure none of the proposals will go ahead and the UK will stagnate and become a country that is little more than an also ran


Sent from my iPhone

 

[The Rok]

The Thames Estuary got canned because the French and Belgians felt it would impinge on their airspace. The simplest (in technical terms) and cheapest solution would be to build another runway at LHR or LGW. But the NIMBY culture in the UK will ensure none of the proposals will go ahead and the UK will stagnate and become a country that is little more than an also ran


Sent from my iPhone

I think you will find that the NIMBY culture is global, including in EVERY Australian City. It is not confined to LHR. In fact LHR have actually done quite well to get the airport to its current size.

 

[SeaWolf]

There is another alternative, make the airlines fly bigger planes into the airports that are at capacity.

I flew out of LHR not that long ago on LH in an A320 to MUC that wasn't even half full! Given the capacity issues related to aircraft movements it would make sense that airlines that are flying many small aircraft a day with low load factors should be forced to consolidate their services to bring the load factors up, and eventually to start using larger aircraft. Does LH really need 8 services a day LHR-MUC and vv. if they're using A32X aircraft that they aren't filling? Could they cut that back to 4 a day and actually fill the aircraft? And then from there start using larger aircraft as demand increases, rather than more of the smaller aircraft more often.

 

[spudseamus]

There is another alternative, make the airlines fly bigger planes into the airports that are at capacity.

I flew out of LHR not that long ago on LH in an A320 to MUC that wasn't even half full! Given the capacity issues related to aircraft movements it would make sense that airlines that are flying many small aircraft a day with low load factors should be forced to consolidate their services to bring the load factors up, and eventually to start using larger aircraft. Does LH really need 8 services a day LHR-MUC and vv. if they're using A32X aircraft that they aren't filling? Could they cut that back to 4 a day and actually fill the aircraft? And then from there start using larger aircraft as demand increases, rather than more of the smaller aircraft more often.

they do Its called Ryan air !!!!:shock:

 

[Flashback]

I thought when this was first mooted that major concerns regarding bird strikes were raised.

Anyway, I wish the environmentalists would stay quiet and allow additional runways at existing airports...

Not only the environmentalists, but the whingers whose houses the runways would cause planes to fly over

 

[anat0l]

Not only the environmentalists, but the whingers whose houses the runways would cause planes to fly over

They are probably the ones with more of an irrational argument than the environmentalists (although as someone who's in the mining industry, I know myself that's an unfair conclusion).