Heathrow is at breaking point and something has to give.
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Additional footage and images: Heathrow Airport, BBC, ITV, The Guardian, The London Standard, British Film Institute, Dave Planes, Thomas Nugent, Konstantin Von Wedelstaedt, Cargospotter, Chris Hoare, World Economic Forum, Channel 4, Clay Gilliland and Conservatives.
00:00 Intro
01:19 Why Heathrow is such a big deal
05:26 Heathrow needs help
07:03 Action plan breakdown
09:44 It’s in the wrong place
14:10 Why the UK is dragging its feet
16:30 Next steps
19:03 Will it happen?
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Why don't we just expand Stansted and move some less popular destinations (long-haul ones as well, of course) there?
Surely, it's much easier to do so as there's nothing much around Stansted, you can literally double the size of that airport, on the Southeast of the current site (the other side of the highway so), and not have to tear down villages and major roads.
Suggestion to Private Backers: UK Gov taking too long and the overcapacity has reached it's limits – everyone knows this.
If every two years the plans are on- and off-schedule – private money spent for plans, permits, research – then get put on hold. Time to move on – London not interested, but other cities and airports will take expansion when private money is used.
I like the island idea – other countries have done it – just learn from the hurdles to make it so.
First.y London Airport was planned in 1943 to facilitate the war in Japan after the defeat of Germany. It’s position was due to the munitions factories in West london and the Army Garrison base at Aldershot. Th original airport in 1943 had 10 runways 7 to the south (the current airport) and. 3 to the North, the current area designated for. the third Runway It was never designed as a military base it was to establish a a civil airport for the Uk aircraft industry to develop new designs ie the Vickers Viscount, Bristol Britannia , Comet and Bristol Brabazon. The area was for future expansion incorporating three close airfields Hendon Fairy Aviation and Hounslow Heather airfield.
And Andy Burnham has now said he doesn't want a third runway lol
Gosh, I hate Heathrow. I try to avoid it whenever possible.
Welcome to the UK. Stuck in politics and red tape… can’t do anything. We will end up poorer as other countries will by pass..
I see £49BN and instantly assume it'll end up costing over £100BN, assuming anything actually passes the planning stages
So at a time when we are being slowly forced to use electric cars, it is now a good idea to put more jet engines in the atmosphere over a major population area.
They decided to start building HS2, linking 2 UK cities 20mph faster. . . but have spent decades rejecting 3rd runway proposals. Makes sense.
Yet another major UK infrastructure project that has spent years being discussed and no action taken because of various legal actions, etc. We are an international joke. The cost will increase each year that nothing happens. The chances of the costs reaching HS2 levels by the time shovels are put into the ground are pretty likely. We’ll be lucky if anything significant has happened by the 2040’s. And no doubt the cost will have increased to well over £100Bn.
One useful solution to ease current constraints would be to ban all UK short haul flights from both LHR and LGW, forcing passengers onto the railways. Similar to the French idea. Possibly even to move the freight hub and associated cargo only flights to another airfield with either existing under utilised nearby rail or low cost new rail infrastructure. Greenham Common would have been a useful freight hub, or alternatively one of the under utilised Midlands area airports or the former RAF Heyford.
However, the best idea overall would have been to create a new airport in the Thames Estuary a la Maplin as first mooted in the 1970’s or so. This just goes to show that the limitations of Heathrow were already being discussed back then, and now, some 50 years later, it is still being discussed when the situation is actually very real.
bbc america. English.
Heathrow is already a monster, constantly encroaching on the communities around it. Why expand it further? Why not build a dedicated cargo airport near the Port of Dover or London Gateway, linking air freight directly with shipping and easing pressure on Heathrow?
Heathrow’s prolonged delay in building its third runway until 2039 has directly boosted rival hubs like Dublin, Amsterdam, and Istanbul by forcing airlines and transit passengers to bypass a maxed-out London.
Wait? Cargo? That's the one thing that can easily be moved to an airport close to railroad and motorway, no need to keep that close to a city.
Heathrow is in the wrong place old hat, close it down when you build a new one on the outskirts of London when it’s built if . New tube line to it. Next. It’s stupid keeping Heathrow.
From what I understand, they are chopping the masts off the SS Richard Montgomery to try and make it safer in case one of them collapsed and caused an explosion. The engineers said that it was reaching the point of WHEN the wreck exploded, not IF it exploded. So what does this have to do with Heathrow's expansion?
Mainly because if the Montgomery explodes, then the main objection to building a new airport in the Thames Estuary fades away. The problem with Boris Island was not really building an airport on water, because Hong Kong and Tokyo have both done this. The biggest objection was an unexploded wreck with approximately 2 to 3 kilotons of conventional explosives which would cause massive urban renewal on Southend and wipe Sheerness off the map!
You could fit two or even three Heathrows onto the Isle of Grain, or build a brand new airport in the estuary and this would relieve the pressure on Heathrow by channeling some of the traffic away from it. We've always assumed that the politicians did not want to make a final decision on the third runway, because they were kicking the can down the road, to make someone else take the blame for all the compulsory purchases of properties. It was also that they were hoping that someone would come up with an alternative solution.
Stansted was also supposed to relieve Heathrow. So was Luton and Gatwick. Gatwick can have a runway extension by 12 metres which will give them two operational runways and that might help, but the major change would be a new airport that's even bigger than Heathrow, much as DWC is much bigger than DXB.
We only need to solve the problem of the Montgomery and then we can proceed.
I'm really worried about the baggage retrieval system.
I'm sure all of us here will be dead before we see a third runway at Heathrow 💀
Dumb vid !
Heathrow maybe important to the UK, in the whole world is isn't very significant!
Pretty pathetic nationalist biased narrative!
It has fallen closer to the 10th busiest airport, it's not the busiest in the World. Atlanta is.