Boris plans Heathrow replacement
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great for someone who travels a lot.
[TW]Fox;12548216 said:
Yes, that was Munich airport. Although the old Riem airport was pretty small to be honest and when they moved it to the then new Frans Josef Strauss airport it only had one terminal. It has two now, the second terminal is like T5 in that it's purely Lufthansa. Even now it's nowhere near the size of Heathrow.
There are some cool youtube videos of the move though, I think it took place in 1995. It was literally overnight with all the equipment being moved via closed off autobahns/roads. They turned the old airport terminals into a nightclub area for a while but now it's offices and an exhibition centre. I used to work opposite the old control tower and there are quite a few Man Utd things there due to the Munich Air disaster.
Moving a fairly small airport is completely different to moving one of the biggest in the world.
Man of Honour
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Because it splits the flights between multiple airports which is a real pain for arranging connections, part of heathrow's appeal is the number of connections available for transit passengers.
Also, if you wanted to split it between 2 or 3 airports, expanding the capacity of Gatwick (allowed in a few years if I remember) and Stansted would make more sense in my mind.
I like the idea of moving heathrow in principle, not wild about the location though, it would be a lot less convenient if you didn't actually live in london (unless of course you live in kent)
Soldato
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Time to buy a house on the approach paths to heathrow?
...at which point they propose to close Heathrow.
They may well be banking on generating money from the sales of land.
My thoughts exactly.
Some of the points in that article are complete and utter rubbish. The slating the new terminal gets in that suggests to me it was probably written by a spin doctor. I used the terminal last week and it was absolutely fine. When something does happen though, there's a big drama about it. Things go wrong - especially for new projects.
It's a stupid idea to gradually shut down Heathrow. The time and money invested in it is so immense, that it would totally ruin the infastructure around it (tube, bus, hotels etc.) It's not as simple as Boris or his delegates make out, and certainly not to the timescale they put it on.
Heathrow definitely will need at least expansion or a supporting airport. But closing it down completely? Will be a big outrage if that ever happens.
And I thought Boris was meant to be "bright".
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Would this then make Crossrail obsolete before it is even built?
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No, why would it?
There is *nothing* in that area, except for the airport.
lol
Precisely my point (after all, I live close by at the moment).
I can appreciate a quiet neighborhood.
Caporegime
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Running two airports instead of one will only increase costs. You're just increasing the number of staff needed to be paid for the SAME number of flights. so same income, more outgoings, with air carriers failing left right and centre competition will just push more of those out of the business, leaving a few key carriers, who can ditact prices anyway despite the airports competing on the tax price side of things. Basically you need a minimum number of staff, on duty at ALL times, one airport at 100% capacity or as close as, or two airports, two of that set of staff, and both operating at 60% capacity. Utterly stupid idea.
how many people are on there, security, air traffic controllers, baggage people, etc, and all the emergency services that have to be on constant standby for immediate deployment. Then theres all the effort concentrated on a single area by police in terms of preventing terrorist plots and having patrols constantly around and so on, double the effort going on in the local area from that point of view.
2 massive airports on that scale simply wouldn't work. Its a massive undertaking but frankly, thats life, change is needed, simply making do because its what we have and because it will be difficult isn't a valid reason for not making needed changes.
You also have to remember, theres a lot of land there, a LOT of money can be made developing that land, a hell of a lot of money.
Not the same scale, but Arsenal spent £400-500mil moving to a bigger stadium, which now runs an awful lot smoother with far higher capacity, but they've made, hundreds of millions making flats in the old space
While of course you could keep all cargo stuff going to heathrow, frankly, cargo warehouses aren't the most complicated or expensive buildings to throw up fairly quickly. That will be one of the easiest things to sort out in terms of relocating.
It will hit the heathrow area very very hard though, hotels, housing prices will crash as its not got the transport benefit, though frankly most people pay more for a good link to get into the city rather than the airport. It should create essentially, just as many jobs as it would destroy just someone further over.
Its seems like the smart thing to do, just costly and will take time, and being that we live in England, massively over budget, late and the IT system will suck and need replacing soon after it gets turned on. But really, terminal 5 was hated by most, though it was needed, and the new link to heathrow was a waste of cash and time aswell. Its labours general thing though, why fix the problem, when you can patch it with expensive short lived useless things that no one wanted in the first place.
how many people are on there, security, air traffic controllers, baggage people, etc, and all the emergency services that have to be on constant standby for immediate deployment. Then theres all the effort concentrated on a single area by police in terms of preventing terrorist plots and having patrols constantly around and so on, double the effort going on in the local area from that point of view.
2 massive airports on that scale simply wouldn't work. Its a massive undertaking but frankly, thats life, change is needed, simply making do because its what we have and because it will be difficult isn't a valid reason for not making needed changes.
You also have to remember, theres a lot of land there, a LOT of money can be made developing that land, a hell of a lot of money.
Not the same scale, but Arsenal spent £400-500mil moving to a bigger stadium, which now runs an awful lot smoother with far higher capacity, but they've made, hundreds of millions making flats in the old space
While of course you could keep all cargo stuff going to heathrow, frankly, cargo warehouses aren't the most complicated or expensive buildings to throw up fairly quickly. That will be one of the easiest things to sort out in terms of relocating.
It will hit the heathrow area very very hard though, hotels, housing prices will crash as its not got the transport benefit, though frankly most people pay more for a good link to get into the city rather than the airport. It should create essentially, just as many jobs as it would destroy just someone further over.
Its seems like the smart thing to do, just costly and will take time, and being that we live in England, massively over budget, late and the IT system will suck and need replacing soon after it gets turned on. But really, terminal 5 was hated by most, though it was needed, and the new link to heathrow was a waste of cash and time aswell. Its labours general thing though, why fix the problem, when you can patch it with expensive short lived useless things that no one wanted in the first place.
That's a very short sighted view. Heathrow cannot expand at the minute. It operates at 100% capacity on a daily basis. You're assuming that there will be no growth in the number of flights into Heathrow in the next 20 or so years. Projected growth in UK air traffic by 2012 is IIRC around about 15-20%.
Yes, creating many more new jobs and a boom in the local economy. How awful!
It works elsewhere, New York for example. Remember, in the grand scheme of things, Heathrow is far from a massive airport. It's actually quite small.
True, but such redevelopment wouldn't happen for a long time. Everything in the area is built around Heathrow. Hounslow, Southall, Hayes and such areas would need to be bulldozed in order to properly redevelop the area. This isn't a bad thing of course but it's very long term.
Hence why in the short term (<20 years) it would make sense to keep Heathrow operational.
True.