Thames Estuary Airport

[tonyh29]

Apparently masses of birds hang out there in winter so you end up with birds going through all the jet engines.

Meh , that can easily be resolved

BEHOLD , the future of Aviation

[brommy]

Apparently masses of birds hang out there in winter so you end up with birds going through all the jet engines.

Meh , that can easily be resolved

BEHOLD , the future of Aviation

and

Excellent but you missed a trick by not using 4 Gabbys or even Heskeys. :winkold:

[Xela]

It's the long haul flights that are the issue and the new breed of super plane will never be accommodated in regional airports

BHX will be decent when expanded and we'll have the crews from the likes Emitates, Qantas and Thai laying over in Solihull hotels again :-)

:winkold:

Amongst other airlines, it's BA I'm interested in getting to BHX, instead they seem fixated on Heathrow, Heathrow and LHR. :x

BA have no interest in anything outside London.

[brommy]

Amongst other airlines, it's BA I'm interested in getting to BHX, instead they seem fixated on Heathrow, Heathrow and LHR. :x

BA have no interest in anything outside London.

They know where the cash is but that doesn't help us. They say it's because Heathrow is where nearly all business people want to fly in/out of; I'd add that's because there's little other choice! I know people who travel far on business and they nearly always have an additional 200 mile return journey because they are pretty much forced to go via Heathrow.

[tinker]

The vast majority of public money for transport is already being spent in the SE/ London see here. Check the comments at the bottom for + votes, they all regonise the fact that the bias towards London is getting past a joke,

"Most of the population lives outside the M25 area, but most of the country's ego lives within, so that's where the money gets spent"

[PauloBarnesi]

I still though dont see why they dont use Northolt as the third runway for Heathrow?!?

I am sure the local residents would love it.

[CI]

Wonder what the people of Grain in Kent make of it all, double edged sword really

[veloman]

This sort of thing was mooted in the early 2000's at a place called Cliffe. My nipper had to do work about it for A Level Geography. That got chucked out but,I think, it was on environmental ground, wildlife habitats etc.

Love that article re. projects skewed towards London. But we all know that it isn't true :shock:

[thetrees]

Amongst other airlines, it's BA I'm interested in getting to BHX, instead they seem fixated on Heathrow, Heathrow and LHR. :x

BA have no interest in anything outside London.

They know where the cash is but that doesn't help us. They say it's because Heathrow is where nearly all business people want to fly in/out of; I'd add that's because there's little other choice! I know people who travel far on business and they nearly always have an additional 200 mile return journey because they are pretty much forced to go via Heathrow.

I never fly on business from Heathrow, I just go via Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt.

They can build as many new airports as they like in London, but I will still go via Europe.

[CI]

In a sense, with the right investment Birmingham could easily become the Frankfurt of the UK

[kidlewis]

BHX already has the most important rail station in the UK. so possibly

[brommy]

They know where the cash is but that doesn't help us. They say it's because Heathrow is where nearly all business people want to fly in/out of; I'd add that's because there's little other choice! I know people who travel far on business and they nearly always have an additional 200 mile return journey because they are pretty much forced to go via Heathrow.

I never fly on business from Heathrow, I just go via Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt.

They can build as many new airports as they like in London, but I will still go via Europe.

Bet you'd rather fly direct from BHX though!

This is for everyone except thetrees (egg sucking grannies etc.):

Many business travellers chase air miles for private use which in the UK often means a preference for BA and therefore Heathrow. My best mate spends 3 to 4 months on business out of the UK which involves 20+ flights every year. As nice as the First lounge is at LHR that he accesses with his gold card, living in Worcester, I'm sure he'd rather fly with BA from BHX saving 2 hours every return trip with less congestion worries to build in to each journey as well.

Ideally there would be about a dozen truly international airports spread evenly around the UK so that 90% of the population would be less than a hour away from an airport that reached most international destinations. Sure LHR would still be the busiest but the likes of BHX would double their customers at least. As BHX is on the London side of Birmingham I'd have thought millions of people living north of Watford would prefer to travel direct from BHX rather than risk the M25 and Heathrow; if they had the choice of direct flights!

[CI]

BHX already has the most important rail station in the UK. so possibly

Correct & once the red lights go on in Moseley again we will be bang up there with Frankfurt

[kidlewis]

the thing is that LHR is the gateway to europe and the east for North America (I think Iceland or Greenland is trying to do something but thats pretty ridiculous and wont do anything).

Madrid is the same for south america, Iberia own that. However the BA/Iberia merger means transatlantic and beyond is all theirs pretty much.

If you look at long haul only Manchester has any real presence outside LHR and LGW and even that is pretty limited in comparison.

I think the third runway was to enable a quicker turnaround for the through routes to europe and beyond for the americas and vice versa. Amsterdam has silly taxi times and one monsterous hub and madrid doesn't have the capacity to compete if LHR got a third runway.

Only really to my knowledge would be what, Frankfurt? but I am not sure you can do FRA to LAX for example in one go. you can do LHR to LAX though ( i might be wrong there though).

If the airport industry in this country could work together a bit more instead of competing we could end up with a pretty epic system.

Short haul shouldn't really be happening at Heathrow apart from a handful of key routes. The rest should be handled by LCY, STN and LTN with very fast links into london.

LGW should be for charters, your holiday companies that don't operate daily flights but operate many on Friday to Monday to seasonal destinations.

LHR should be through routes and long haul only really, it cannot handle the capacity and to be honest with so many regional airports offering the same route I don't know why anyone more than 30 miles of the airport bothers to fly from there short haul.

One thing to remember is that some destinations will only have demand for one or two routes. For example Auckland in New Zealand isn't going to be full even twice weekly from BHX, even Manchester would struggle to make a daily service viable for a flight like that. So for things like that LHR should be king.

Where you can offer better things from regionals are places like Maldives, LAX, caribbean, mexico and even Thailand. Destinations where competition drives price down and also are popular for holidaymakers. A seasonal route to many of these could work from BHX and other regionals.

Also BHX has a better foot in the door than most with HS2 on the way, an established station with direct links into the terminal and plenty of parking for even double capacity. with the NEC next door as well that exhibition centre could spring to life once more and be packed a lot of the time.

not enough on site hotels though, that would need to change, especially something high end like a Hyatt or Radisson Blu/SAS. It's also near the M6 and M42 so that is another big tick for BHX.

centrally located in the UK as well.

Direct flights are obviously the best way to do things. I find these comparison sites unbelievably shit, even skyscanner pulls up some stupid options sometimes.

It is like going to google maps to get directions from Birmingham to London and it returns 10 different route options with 2 going via luxembourg city. Just don't show them you daft piece of shit.

but that is what you get when sites are build purely from a database and price feeds from third parties. There is no "ffs don't be an idiot" option when querying results.

Even selecting direct flights only you still get silly results because they throw in codeshares, so you get the same flight bookable on two or even three airlines.

[peterms]

Following the Uk's late entry to the 20th century with HS2 there is now talk about a new airport at Thames Estuary

Libe dems are against it , which straight away should be a good enough reason for being "for" it but what do people feel about a project like this ?

a 24-hour, four-runways airport, with each runway 2.5 miles long and with facilities to cope with 150 million passengers a year.

or

or should we just look to expand Heathrow with a third runway and paper over the cracks ?

150 million passengers a year! My **** arse.

A 2020 solution to a 1990 problem. Good old Boris. Never fails to disappoint.

There's not going to be ever-expanding air traffic. It was never desirable, and now it won't be possible. Use the land for wheat, eggs or whatever. And throw **** Boris into the Thames, with a scale model of the new airport stuffed into his trousers.

[brommy]

The fact that Heathrow is the gateway from the UK to much of the world is what needs to change. The government should do everything reasonable to support investment in regional airports and reward airlines for offering viable alternatives to flying from LHR.

For example, BA have 42 flights per week from LHR to Berlin and none from BHX. Does everyone who flies on these flights really prefer to use Heathrow? I doubt it! If the government said 'you can have 28 flights to Berlin per week and we'll levy a heavy surcharge on any more, but support you offering flights from these regional airports still within 100 miles of LHR', what would BA do?

I accept that some of the routes LHR offer will not be profitable from BHX. However to offer 4, 5, 6 or even 7 flights per day to a single destination from LHR and none from regional airports such as BHX does not make sense to 90% of the UK who don't live within an hour of getting to Heathrow.

[kidlewis]

But those 42 don't cater just for the uk they cater for a huge percentage of anyone west of the uk wanting to go to Berlin.

Lhr is one of very few hubs in Europe and its the only one the uk will ever get to see.

Paris

Amsterdam

Madrid

Frankfurt

Heathrow

You make lhr the best connecting airport in the world and utilise regionals to take on all short hauls for domestic and key holiday routes.

Heathrow should be reserved for connecting flights and major long hauls.

You don't penalise BA for heathrow you subsidise regionals. One massive way would be to subsidise parking at regionals to make it very cheap or invest in making check in and security queues very short

[brommy]

Fair point kidlewis; I hadn't thought about LHR also being a hub for onward European flights.

If the other major European airports you listed are similar 'hubs', I'd hope there wasn't a ridiculous number of flights to them from LHR; after all most international travellers can fly directly to the hub airport. However, I'd bet there are still loads of LHR flights to other hubs and hardly any from regional airports. :|

[LancsVillan]

Surely you don't need your hub to be on the outskirts of the most expensive city in the country, a good way to boost the economy for any government that cares would be to expand regional airports so they can seen and used as a hub too. Also isn't LHR thermostat expensive landing fee around so some competition would be good there too for travellers and airlines.

[kidlewis]

It's already established though the investment required for any of the other would be ridiculous.

For a start youd need two runways and a capacity of over 20m a year at a minimum.

London is one Of the most important cities in the world and with much of the traffic going there as well or uk flights I makes sense for lhr to be a hub. Ideally you'd want lhr located where LCYis then you have something special.

Regionals should be there to cater for all holiday flights for the region. Basically if you want to go on holiday your local airport should offer that route. Many are starting to however LGW is the long haul holiday airport.

That will change as regionals improve their facilities runway and get more affluent areas around them.

To get people away from London as a departure is to do with allocation. The volume is so high many operators can get x seats each week or day on any route.

If an airline only operates a biweekly service to malaga etc other operators won't buy their seats to sell their holidays. As a result regionals become more of a risk for airlines as their clients are not just customers they are holiday operators and flight aggregators like dial a flight who may buy up say 10 seats on every Monday flight to Malaga with Flybe, then try an make £50 a passenger with their clients and way more if availability is low.

The best thing to do is offer better facilities. Stagnated raddison is great example. Nice hotel with great advanced pre night stay and parking option with valet. Spa with pool and direct access to the terminal.

If bhx had one of those attached to the terminal that would be a start.

I am not sure what bhx lounges are like but again something to keep business passenger happy.

Outside the box? Family facilities including soft play in departures better shops DECENT comfortable chairs etc.

also price is important, if regionals can offer a better profit margin than London to outweighs the obvious commercial risks in doing so then that should help a lot.

BA rules LHR the slots they have are great and believe me any airline would take their role on there at a drop of a hat.

Hs2 will no doubt help BHX and MAN.