Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:41:35 on
Tue, 11 Oct 2011, Bruce remarked:
The proposal for a second runway is a little over 1km to the south of
the existing one, with the new (third) terminal between the runways.

There is no proposal for a second runway. Legally, there can be no
such proposal until 2019.

There has been a proposal since at least 2005 (I've been quoting from
the BAA documents). No doubt the new owners considered such proposals
before buying - it would be an insane leap in the dark not to.

What they can't do is *start building* until 2019. I originally thought
they couldn't apply for planning permission until 2019, but it's not
even that.


That is what I thought too. I researched it in some detail in the
1990s as I lived in an area of Sussex that already had quite a lot of
aircraft noise and would have had more if the changes had gone ahead.

It was quite clear at that time that a second runway could not even be
considered before 2019. I wonder when that changed, because a lot was
written and said about it at the time to reassure people who were
concerned that they might be affected.

I'm not sure exactly what is the status of the current government
review of airport capacity in the south east, but I fear that it will
be the usual superficial, short term study that politicians adore.
What we really need is a Royal Commission.

The last one we had produced the Roskill report. Its recommendation
for a new airport at Cublington, near Aylesbury was not accepted and
the Tory government of the day (1971) chose Maplin Sands (Foulness),
which was later rejected in favour of developing Stansted. However the
wealth of high quality objective research that was commissioned for
the report has informed airport policy ever since.

It is that kind of depth and breadth of research that is needed now,
and unfortunately it looks like we aren't going to get it. Instead,
far reaching decisions are likely to be made on a short term whim, and
HS2 has shown how a thoroughly daft idea can gain the most enormous
political momentum, all for the wrong reasons.