LONDON's Airports – one big, crumbling MESS

Originally posted by Ren Frew
Not entirely unlike some of Ryanair’s converted airbase destinations nowadays really ?

LMAO!

Originally posted by Bmused55

In 1944 Heathrow was nothing but a grass field with a few tents.

Not entirely unlike some of Ryanair’s converted airbase destinations nowadays really ?

Well right now you have 2 options:

1) Build a huge CDG style airport , but it will be far away from downtown and expensive. Anyway this thing won’t pop up out of the ground overnight. CDG took 30 years to be as it is.
If the thing is let’s say 50 miles away from London , you need a fast (TGV style) and cheap ground transportation.
The Stansted express for example is convienient but awfully slow and expensive.

2) Expand the existing ones such as LHR (Myabe room for a 3rd runway) , STN (maybe more room for development there) etc…

Anyway , that’s a matter of political will and …. big $$ ooops sorry ££ 🙂

My first spotting visit to Heathrow was in 1966 and it was a busy airport then. In the late sixties and early seventies, you could regularly count anything up to 20+ aircraft waiting to take off at busy times. A quiet day then (Sundays) seldom saw less than 600 air transport movements. It was obvious that things were going to get busy even then that is why the Roskill Commission was appointed to examine the possibilities for an Official Third London Airport – Foulness was proposed but rejected as was Stansted – A joke at the time was that the third London airport should be Benbecula. In the end nothing happened and decades later Stansted started to take on the role envisaged for it back in the sixties (albeit not in the way people thought). I have a booklet from 1967 called “Londons Airports” by Maurice Allward with the proposals for Stansted at the time and it states “Mentioning Stansted as Londons Third Airport may be rather premature”.
The problem is that building airports and runways has never been a big vote winner.

Originally posted by Hand87_5
I don’t think that’s a good reason. A gov has always a right of priority in a land acquisition over private people. I would be surprised if you had something different in the UK.

So maybe we can call that INSUFFICIENT planning instead of POOR planning 🙂

Hand you are right. The Government does have a right of priority in land acquisition. In the UK it is called a compulsory purchase order in which the owner whose property is being compulsorily purchased is unlikely to get the market value of the house. To employ CPO’s to expand LHR would encompass a huge number of properties whose owners would, effectively, lose quite heavily in the housing market. This would nor endear the Government to the VOTERS who live in those properties so a Government has to weigh up very carefully whether there would be any benefit in taking such measures…..

Sandy is right in what he has said about Heathrow. I don’t think it was ever envisaged that air travel would escalate in the way it has and that LHR, being close to Central London when the airport was planned would ever have to cope with the capacity it has to now.

A380. “NIMBY’s and all these stupid groups like “friends of the earth” have way too much power over authority!”

What a naive statement. Someone wants to demolish the area where you live including your property to build a supermarket, a hospital or even convert the area to parkland and you would happily comply with that? I think not. I think you would find just how powerless NIMBY’s are then. Progress is all about achieving an acceptable balance, acceptable to the majority that is. You and your family don’t want your house demolished to build a supermarket but a catchment of 10,000 people in the area are in favour I’m afraid your house is history unless there are some very special extenuating circumstances. Try to remember there are at least two sides to every story.

Regards,

kev35

Originally posted by Hand87_5
I don’t think that’s a good reason. A gov has always a right of priority in a land acquisition over private people. I would be surprised if you had something different in the UK.

So maybe we can call that INSUFFICIENT planning instead of POOR planning 🙂

Whatever you want to call it, the authorities planed for expansion as they saw fit at the time. In the 1940’s how were they to know Heathrow, then a grass field, would become the worlds busiest international airport.

I don’t think that’s a good reason. A gov has always a right of priority in a land acquisition over private people. I would be surprised if you had something different in the UK.

So maybe we can call that INSUFFICIENT planning instead of POOR planning 🙂

Originally posted by Hand87_5
Do you mean that the LHR area was already congested in the 60’s

No But by then, housing developments were either getting built or planned, with land bought etc.

London had been given a bad beating during the war and several districts had to be completely rebuilt, some relocated (1950’s)
All this and the expansion of London due to more people moving to london, needing housing meant space was rapidly used up.
The Authorities for Heathrow reseverved enough land for what they saw at that time as adequate expansion room.
This was before the 747 bear in mind and at a time when there were relatively few airlines.

Do you mean that the LHR area was already congested in the 60’s

Originally posted by Hand87_5
Bmused55

I disagree here. We are speaking about LONG TERM planning here.
Why would the French authorities have a vision in the 60’s about air travel development and not the British one?
Are the Brits more stupid? I don’t think so.
I guess it’s just a lack of ambition. I agree that NOW the development options are limited since the houses are surrounding all the place. But in the 50’s and 60’s LHR had certainly more development options.

Well you are talking about planning in the 60’s, where jet travel was around. Planes were also much larger by then and Air Travel was getting popular

Heathrow was planned the 40’s!!!! No jets. Well one or two but purely fighters and very early designs at that.
Also, only the wealthy travelled by air in the 40’s and at the time no one saw a change to that.

You can clearly see, there is 20 year difference in the planning of LHR and CDG. Not realy a fair comparison is it.

In those 20 years there was BIG BIG change in the attititude towards air travel.

NIMBYs

If you disagreed with planes passing over head, why move near to an airport?

From what I’ve seen on TV it is quite bad, and loud but the people don’t look stupid, and the houses look quite nice that surround the airport.

Sam

Bmused55

I disagree here. We are speaking about LONG TERM planning here.
Why would the French authorities have a vision in the 60’s about air travel development and not the British one?
Are the Brits more stupid? I don’t think so.
I guess it’s just a lack of ambition. I agree that NOW the development options are limited since the houses are surrounding all the place. But in the 50’s and 60’s LHR had certainly more development options.

Originally posted by A380!!
LHR were it is a huge ****-up, really. The area grew around the airport (as in population) when the goverment / owners did not bother to develop actual runway capacity for the future… the result…. this mess we have now, of indeed, poor past planning and development!

What you seem to forget is that Heathrow Airport has been around since Aviation began. But realy became an “airport” in the 1940s.

In 1944 Heathrow was nothing but a grass field with a few tents.

There was NO way for developers then to know that in 60 years time air travel would be as it is now.
Heathrow was built in London, an already well established city. The achres of land they had then were plenty.

Now, they’ve outgrown that space and are very limited with what they can do. There just isn’t room to build a 3rd runway immediately. Houses WILL have to be knocked down. The People in these house need to re relocated first, that is if they co-operate.

Please, check your history and facts and take this into consideration before bad mouthing an airport.

LHR

I agree, but Heathrow is the busiest airport in the world, something not to quibble at.

True, it is down to bad planning, and if the airport were to downsize or lose passengers, the NIMBYs would complain because their business would lose money etc.

Its bad when they want it to be but in all I think it is good.

I have only flown out once and into once, the public transport links we used were rubbish, granted we did want to get a bus at 5 in the morning and there was only 1 for two hours.

It was over crowded, but we met Craiiig Daviiid….

Sam

LHR were it is a huge ****-up, really. The area grew around the airport (as in population) when the goverment / owners did not bother to develop actual runway capacity for the future… the result…. this mess we have now, of indeed, poor past planning and development!

Isn’t it about bad planning?

The netherland has the highest population density in Europe.

When the French gov decided to start CDG late 60’s they froze a HUGE amaont of land around the T1 terminal. They planned the TGV to connect there and a bunch of freeways.

Even if not perfect I have to admit that those guys had a vision.
There is enough room to build 3 or 4 more runways and a dozen of other terminals.

It’s not that usual to claim that the French gov was wise and smart 😀