"Richard J." wrote in message

Roland Perry wrote on 08 October 2011 17:20:16
...
In message
,
at 08:55:32 on Sat, 8 Oct 2011,
remarked:
the Tories (sorry coalition's) secret agenda is to turn Birmingham
Airport into another London Airport, using HS2 as the mechanism,

Why a secret, it's a pretty obvious way to increase (air) capacity at
much lower low cost/impact than a third runway at Heathrow.

How exactly does a rail link between LHR and LGW increase *air*
capacity? The problem at Heathrow is said to be that the runways are
98% fully used. Gatwick is already the world's busiest single-runway
airport. So how is this capacity increase achieved?

Indeed, this link only makes sense if Gatwick gets its second runway.
Equally, it would greatly strengthen the business case for that second
runway. It's not allowed until after 2019, but of course, even if they
started planning for it today, it wouldn't open this side of 2020.