To think drones need to banned ASAP

[Wanttoretirebefore90]

It's not going to be long until one takes down a dreamliner and kills 600 :(

I do think they should be licenced, but not banned - they have lots of users. I know people will still build their own, unlicenced, drones, but at least police would then have powers to confiscate and destroy the drone.

Move the airport?

This place is bonkers at times.
The road and rail infrastructure. The hotels and catering and people who work there. And where is this magical empty acres with good transport yet zero people living in it they should move to?
Classic.

Moving it would save thousands of lives in the case of a jumbo coming down in a densely populated area

It's a risk. It's non-zero, but it's very, very small. Heathrow has been operating since the war without a; about the only accident like this in Europe is El Al 1862 at Amsterdam; Schipol is comparable to Heathrow in many ways. On the other hand, people who work at an airport have to get there, and the road death rate per mile means that an airport in the middle of nowhere would almost certainly kill more people than it would save, averaged over the lifetime of the airport.

By the way, one incident which didn't result in a crash on London saw the only peacetime award of a George Cross to a woman, Barbara Harrison. It is a scandal that Sharon Ford and Jacqui Urbanski not similarly honoured; they were last seen alive going back in to get more passengers.

Move Heathrow????

Aye, lets just move all the airports shall we??

I agree move it east. Then build a high speed railway. Solved! Crazy where it is

I work at Heathrow and live less than 40 miles away, yet in all the years I've worked there I have never been able to use public transport to get there as they haven't got round to building any railway that goes to Heathrow from anywhere except the centre of London, entirely disregarding the fact that many of Heathrow's 75000 workers live to the west of the airport, as do many of the passengers using it. The debate about an extra runway has gone on for years, as has the debate about another high speed rail link, the HS2. I can't imagine quickly throwing up a whole new airport with associated infrastructure would be easy. There are numerous cities in the world where we fly over built up areas, and London is not among the most densely populated areas by any stretch - if you saw what I see going into places like Bombay, New York, Mexico City, Lisbon, Boston, Rio,San Francisco, etc you'd be amazed at how close we get to the cities - it's what makes it the best office window on earth.

Heathrow occupies 12 sq km, employs nearly 80,000 people and over 200,000 passengers moving through it each day. Try picking that lot up and dropping it down elsewhere! Imagine the impact of building the terminals, runways, road & rail links. Then add on all the service industries that surround Heathrow and move that lot as well. It just won't happen - no community would support such a re-location.

I don’t think they should be banned, but heavily regulated - yes. They should be treated as necessities only - not toys/hobby items. I understand their use for firefighting/flood recovery etc but there is absolutely no need whatsoever for Joe Public to be flying a small aircraft over public and private land. MIL’s husband has one that he uses to make videos etc but there is zero purpose to it and he regularly points out people in their gardens/out hillwalking etc in his videos - it’s weird at best and very, very creepy at worst.

Has there been any actual proof that it was a drone holding up all of the flights before Christmas yet

Yes, random members of the public do not need these, so why is it allowed? Licensing for use by farmers, surveyors etc is at least better than a free-for-all.

Yes they should be banned to general public.

The police, military and possibly media and film makers should have them on a license. The rest. Just no.

MIL’s husband has one that he uses to make videos etc

www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Walts

"The kind of middle aged man who delivers parcels in his Mini Metro but at weekends goes and plays paintball with a bunch of kids. They're often seen bringing their own webbing, paintballs and pathetic smoke grenades. They're friends with everyone there but have no friends of their own."

I see the arguments for Heathrow and there is so thruth there, however shortsighted.

It keeps running out of capacity and its location cannot provide for growth without significantly impacting quality of life around it. Not just noise, but safety concerns and air pollution. It’s billions in the red and expansion will have to by funded by the taxpayers, billions again.
As for the communities most councils are launching a legal challenge to the expansion plans, so that tells you where they stand on that.
A big, modern airport, accessible through high speed links is the way forward and will create needed jobs, instead of patching up the worst option.

A big, modern airport, accessible through high speed links is the way forward

Where? Pretty much by definition, an international airport employs lots of people. Who will, over time, gravitate to live nearby. If it creates jobs, adjoining towns and cities will grow, so precisely the same safety risks - small, but non zero - will obtain. You can't build airports in the middle of nowhere for "safety reasons" (and, of course, south England doesn't have a nowhere to have a middle of) and simultaneously claim you're creating jobs. All you're doing is shifting the risk from important London residents to less important residents of elsewhere .

Those with an interest in wartime intelligence should look up the moral argument in cabinet that was had over proposals to use the double-cross system to shift the aiming point for V1s from London to Kent.

If the aircraft land over water then there will be no risk to residents, be they ‘important’ or not.

If the aircraft land over water then there will be no risk to residents

Depending on the radius from the airport you're worried about. A plane losing an engine on takeoff followed by things going wrong could easily hit the ground ten miles away. Where in the UK is there somewhere with ten miles of water around it? What scenario are you worried about?

Heathrow should have been moved decades ago instead of keeping to patch it up.

It's literally the worst place in London for an airport.

You tell the people of Lockerbie or Shoreham that a plane coming down is a tiny tiny risk

Take off flight paths are more flexible, a taking off aircraft can be over water very quickly, it’s landing aircraft that are more vulnerable.

You can't just MOVE Heathrow. It covers an area of 3000 acres. Where are you going to find 3000 acres of uninhabited, non-greenbelt land to plonk it down on?!

Of course on easterlies the pattern will be reversed, but easterlies are not prevalent in the SE.

Think about it that way, if you move it you can develop the area for housing, so that’s a win.

Banned no - restricted yes.

I went hiking on Mt Batur volcano some time ago. A drone shot up to the sky from no where and startled me, I wonder, had I been stand close to an edge, would it have made me jump and tumble down? The sound came from nowhere, a warning would have been nice.

Of course no one is suggesting moving existing structures

But it's not impossible to build a new airport to london and link it with high speed rail. The sooner it's done the better.

Imagine a dreamliner full of fuel hitting winter wonderland and killing thousands. It will take something like that to move Heathrow.

You tell the people of Lockerbie or Shoreham that a plane coming down is a tiny tiny risk

That's precisely the point. Lockerbie is "the middle of nowhere". If you were going to shift an airport to somewhere "without a lot of people around" the gap between Carlisle and Glasgow would be a reasonable bet. If your threat model is "a plane exploding at altitude" then nowhere in the UK is safe.

Similarly Shoreham: it hit a road. Are you proposing that aircraft should not be operated anywhere there is a road within range?

So to prevent Lockerbie and Shoreham, what does aviation in the UK look like? No internal flights, for a start off. I guess an offshore airport each side, one for the Atlantic, one for, well, not Europe as we can't overfly land, but I guess Asia would be accessibly via the Arctic.

But it's not impossible to build a new airport to london and link it with high speed rail

Where?