O'Leary right for once?

I agree with spreading air travel out to local airports in the south east, but i can’t see the operators of London airports paying to improve facilities at other airports if they are not allowed to improve their own, that will in some part compete and are all owned by profit making private companies.

The infrastructure at both Manston and Lydd is very limited, and needs millions of pounds of investment to make them what the modern day travelling public and airline industry expect, whilst paying the low fares and fees they expect. You need to make money to spend money, and in the current climate, that just won’t happen.

Having called into Lydd last week, they do have some reasonable plans to expand, all tying in with the planned closure of dungeness nuclear power station in 2018, and the plans seem very balance and mature and the owners are willing to pay to make it happen, But i just feel Lydd is too far from public transport links and a decent distant to the M20.

Manston want to build up their existing cargo business to make the money to invest in the airports infrastructure, but the owners seem to be unwilling to spend the minimal amounts needed to get this under way, with local residents understandably unwilling to have the noise and congestion with little benefit to the local area, so i can see Manston just treading water with the current owners.

Something needs to be done, and soon about the state of Londons airports, so many airports throughout the world are progressing and the Uk is stuck in the mud, I love flying, and love having worked in aviation, but despite the desire to travel i am really growing tired of the grind of going to the airport, its tiring, stressful, dirty and getting worse, with no end in sight.:(

Yes, he’s right to say that the idea of an airport in the Thames esturary is “absolutely nuts”, because frankly it is…however, I don’t agree with him that Heathrow, Gatwick & Stansted all need more runways.

What could/should be done in my opinion is for the money that would be used to build new runways at “London” airports, should be channelled into improving the facilities at other smaller airports such as Lydd and Manston in Kent, and also developing the public transport links to these airports in order to make them more accessible.

I also think that once Crossrail comes into use, a congestion charge fee should be implemented around Heathrow in order to help reduce the number of cars that are driven to the airport, as there is frankly no excuse for people not being able to make use of the various public transport options that are available to them.

Whilst on the topic of south-east airports; are there plans to introduce true RNAV procedures to utilise the airspace in a better manner? By better, I mean more efficient routings, giving a better spread of traffic over a wider area to reduce community noise.

They could force the Luton Council to actualy give a crap and make it possible for the Spanish group leasing the airport to make money back on investment.

Lots of possibility at LTN if they were allowed to get their finger out.. STN can also be better utilised without the HUGE expansion it wanted.

LHR and LGW have pretty much no space.. the other 2 have possibilities, Govt cant just sit on its ass and cave in to all this “green” crap because the rest of the world is going to continue building airports and the UK is going to have egg on its face years from now.

…for once?;)

Are Stanstead and Gatwick not getting second runways for the same reasons LHR is not?

That’s a first, I was nodding in agreement as O’Leary was talking. He is absolutely right!

I was wondering when he mentioned adding a third runway at Heathrow; does Ryanair have goals of flying into Heathrow in the long term?