"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Robin" wrote in message
...
Regardless , the whole motive behind blighting somewhere in the
southeast
with another runway seems to be so that airlines and BAA can make
more profit. It has zilch to do with the UK economy other than the
small amount of extra corporation tax it would deliver which would be
more than ofset by the billions it would cost to build the thing in
the first place even with partial private finance. Its a cynical
campaign by private corporations for the government to spend huge
amounts of public money on some infrastructure that will benefit
almost no one economically except themselves and their shareholders.

Do you think that multinationals don't take into account ease of travel
when deciding where to base overseas offices?

Not to a great extent no. Staff costs (including ease of hiring and
firing) will trump this by the very large margin

Eg that a Chinese company might prefer to base its European operation
near an airport with direct flights to all major Chinese cities?

Prove to me that this will be possible if LHR had an extra runway. I
don't believe that you can do it, it is nonsense speculation

Do you think that having the overseas offices of multinationals does no
good to the UK economy in terms of direct jobs, demand for support
services etc?

Do you think the French, Germans, Dutch etc are mad for building major
airports and that ur David is the only one in step?

The Germans and the Dutch made the right choice 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, we didn't and we are stuck with that bad choice

tim


If you look at the M4, M3 and M40 "corridors" you will find many non-UK
businesses. There are all sorts of reasons why they set up there but the
proximity of Heathrow has often been cited by such companies as one (not
the) reason for locating there.

I even have some personal experience of this although it's slightly skewed.
The (UK based and owned) company I worked for in the mid 1980s was asked to
supply some staff to support the start up of a new company that had
shareholders from 8 different companies. The company settled in Swindon
(of all places) and I spent a year working there. The nature of the work
was such that they needed some specialist programmers (not me) of which
there was a group around Heathrow employed by one of the shareholders.
They would have preferred to be nearer to Heathrow (subsequently they moved
to Windsor by which time much of the coding had moved to India) but there
was a feeling that Swindon was far enough to stop too many Heathrow based
programmers moving down the road.

As I said earlier, there are a number of reasons why companies choose their
locations. In this case there were some rather attractive grants and
things like rent holidays on offer for settling in Swindon.

But, of course, that experience is well out of date. Does it still happen?
Would the building of a new runway (and terminal) at Heathrow bring in more
companies? Well, you can look at a reverse example. The banks, in
London, have moved to Canary Wharf. Not all of them but enough to make it
worth British Airways acquiring 2 A318s for the specific purpose of
operating between London City and JFK New York. Would BA be operating that
route without the companies in Canary Wharf providing the traffic base? I
doubt it; some of the traffic will come from companies that stayed in "the
City" but I doubt the justification would have been there without the move
to Canary Wharf and the building of City Airport.

Then there are the regional airports. Several have lost their connections
to Heathrow, Inverness and Plymouth spring to mind. The companies based
near those airports have complained vociferously (but unsuccessfully) about
the loss of access to Heathrow in particular and London (but Inverness now
has flights to Gatwick).

You're absolutely right, there are all sorts of reasons why companies locate
in a particular place but to dismiss airport access and the routes from that
airport is wrong in my view.