Boris Johnson wants to close down Heathrow

[LoveSewingBee]

Why bother building a totally newairport at huge cost in a place with an insufficient transport network? Just move all the traffic to Schiphol ...

I've often wondered why people put up with the awful noisy, crowded conditions in and around London and the South East. Why does all the economic activity have to be concentrated in one place?

On the other hand, it does mean that we can enjoy a better quality of life here in Scotland without having to put up with the inconvenience, noise and pollution of yet more airports.

But yes, why not make London and the Southeast into one huge airport, one big crossroads in the sky and on the roads and under the ground? With one overriding purpose - to encourage and facilitate economic growth.

Meanwhile we will continue to cultivate our gardens, in this, the best of all possible worlds.

gatwick has the gatwick express and you can be in London bridge or Victoria in Hal an hour, that's quick enough isn't it? not that I want gatwick to expand thanks as it is currently quite pleasant to travel from, you couldn't pay me to go to heathrow.

Heathrow is overcrowded already, and the number of flights going over the several million people who live in central and west London is too many already, and the requirement for "silent hours" between 11 and 5 so at least day workers can count in some quiet time to sleep is being eroded.

Not to mention What would happen if a plane on takeoff had a catastrophic fault and came down over say Chiswick.

A new site, which didn't require overflying London, would be a vast improvement. The new airport on an island in ChekLapKok (with fast transport links) worked really well. Heathrow would continue until new airport up and running - it would take about as long to build a new one as to add a terminal.

Gatwick, Stansted or anywhere which doesn't ever have central London under its approach/take-off routes would be better.

Its not strictly true that you can get to Heathrow on the Express in 15 mins... you can technically - but only terminals 1, 2 and 3. If you want 4 or 5 it takes longer. For terminal 4, you have to change trains and the wait can be up to 15mins for a 4 min transfer. They would need to build a 6th terminal if they added another runway - so travel times on the Express would increase as well.

There is also an interesting article here about Heathrow being the worst airport in Europe for noise pollution - the population is far more dense around Heathrow than our other airports so more people are affected by each flight.

Its also worth noting that a new Heathrow runway would mean the North London people would be under the flight path for the first time, so this isn't just a South West London problem.