I am pleased to report that following my lobbying and the lobbying of others about the new noisier routes being trialled to and from Heathrow, the airport has decided to curtail the trials. They were to run to 26 January but will now stop on 12 November, giving us a quieter Christmas period.
I have stressed in my representations that we want the airport to adopt new routes and timetables that cut the noise footprint, avoiding hours when people are usually asleep. There are ways of getting planes into and out of the airport with steeper flight paths that can help. Quieter engines will help over time.
We also need to tackle the shortage of runway capacity so we do not need night flights, and have sufficient space for planes to land promptly on arrival in UK airspace. It does look as if all the main political parties now agree we need decisions on airport capacity quickly after the General Election.
October 10, 2014
For me, the bigger problem with Heathrow is access. No matter how many runways it has, there is not too much that can be done to improve how much of a pain it is to drive to, from, or past it. Rail links to London or out through the Chilterns are all very well, but Heathrow is so much more important than any other airport in the Country that too large a proportion of the air travelling public are pushed through it.
There are parallels with the way that changes to NHS childrens heart surgery in the South is being rearranged; don’t spread it out because there can be a better single specialist. The inevitable consequence is that people have to do much more travelling (at least reaching an airport is rarely life-or-death), and if there is a problem at that site (snow at Heathrow, or a C-Diff outbreak at the hospital) then the whole service collapses in a heap.
Mr Johnsons wish for an airport on the other side of London has obvious and probably insurmountable flaws, but at least it was an alternative view. We need a viable alternative to simply making Heathrow into a bigger monster.
October 12, 2014
Mick
Agree, we need other solutions to improve capacity rather just expand Heathrow.
Perhaps we should look at some of the smaller regional airports for short haul flights.
So many people seem to oppose The Thames estuary option, but British Architects designed what is supposed to be a magnificent new Airport on a man made island in Hong Kong.
Should this site be a real option, then some aircraft arriving from the East would surely not need to overfly London at all.
Whilst the Lib Dums want to starve our Country of expansion given their recent conference vote, the rest of us have to live in the real World, If we want to survive with regards to trade and leisure.
Our population is expanding, so transport has to expand to go with it.