Runway debate: An opportunity lost?

“Tody123,

It is quiet for the same reason that Pilning Station is quiet. It has been deliberately run down to make it uneconomic, so that closure is justified.”

“@ markmaggs9391

Your comment on having a Severn estuary airport has set me thinking. Sadly though, I can't see the politics or the finances involved allowing such an idea to come to fruition.

Try this for a thought. After many years of prevarication the Severn Barrage has moved one step closer to being built. With the construction of the barrage, why not take a leaf out of the Far East book and built an artificial island that connects with the barrage and build the new airport on that.

Road and rail links could be built on top of the barrage and there would be no commercial or residential buildings to present problems. Naturally, the owners of Bristol International would be put out as would the owners/operators of Cardiff Rhoose, the latter showing a marked decline in operations. If these two were given vested interests in the new airport then it could happen.

As I said at the beginning, just a thought and hardly liable to happen the the United Kingdom of today or the forseable future.”

“Problem is airport expansion and capacity is a very difficult issue and you will never keep all parties happy.

Boris Johnsons idea of a super airport has its advantages, it is away from high populations so noise ect is less of an issues, still very close to London, could link by rail to France.

Negative points, further from Bristol and the West, although if your going to Australia is another half an hour or hour really going to kill you? Is it wise to build an airport next to a sunk and unstable ship carrying explosives? (Removing it isn't that viable).

People moan it would harm jobs by Heathrow but it wouldn't as I see it, most airlines would move from Heathrow/Gatwick to the new airport. Then a lot of low cost/regional airlines would probably move to Heathrow, as they would lower fees ect ect, Gatwick may too survive, but im not as sure about Stansted and Luton that are already suffering.

Theoreticaly Stansted is the best airport to expand as it could be massive although people were promised expansion wouldnt take place for years to come.

Filton could never be an international airport, as it's too close to populations maybe if it was done back in the 60's 70's but not today. Possible ideas could be a Severn estuary airport, Near to the motorway and South Wales.

There are soo many options, although competition makes it hard, as it results in unused capacity and new airports become less viable and people dont want 10 London Airports we already have at least 8 calling themselves London Airports. We need decisive action to put capacity where it's needed and accessible to the masses. But not regional Heathrows!

And Im not even going to start of environment and politics involved.”

“The opportunity to turn Filton into an international airport was lost when Lulsgate was developed in place of Whitchurch.

Successive waves of residential and commercial building has left the airfield surrounded by developement that would be unaccepable for the contruction/developement of a new international airport.

We have already seen residents, many of whom have a view of the airfield, complaining about aircraft noise and pollution despite the airfield being there when they bought their property. Whatever other arguments for and against there are 'nimbyism' will win the day.

Look no further that the new rail facility at Stoke Gifford - South Gloucestershire - to see the way in which home owners have reacted albeit that they seem to have lost that particular argument.”

“"Without a third runaway at Heathrow, what would be London's loss could have been Bristol's gain with Filton capable of taking excess capacity away from the capital's airports. "

I'm sorry but though tears of laughter, I just couldn't read beyond those words.”

“Martin,

Filton is basically shut already. Hardly anything flying over my house anymore.”

“lolly60,

It tells me that I can't afford it. It tells me that BAe are in deep trouble, and need a quick-fix short-term gain rather than long-term growth. It tells me that Bristol's future as an engineering base is in serious doubt. It tells me that the future is, however, assured for the Eastern European workers who will build the "affordable" houses for our next generation of unemployed single mums and men with bad backs to live in. (Don't get me wrong - I have worked in France for French employers, and have no problem with them competing against our native "work"force). It tells me that if you're living in train-free Thornbury or Almondsbury, your journey to work in Bristol will get much worse when the extension to Patchway and Southmead is complete. It tells me that, for the same reason of extra traffic, it won't be a good idea to go anywhere near Cribbs Causeway to do the Christmas shopping anytime after the end of September (that's a good thing).

FromMendip,

Boeing's Dreamliner 787, of which 21 are now flying, and Airbus' A350 XWB, under development, are designed to fly quietly and economically over long distances into shorter airfields. Bristol to New York / Goa / Johannesburg should be feasible, IF demand exists. They would make Mexico too, although having been there once, I can't think why anyone would want to go there. Cardiff handles a lot of BA's engineering work. Can you think of anywhere else where that could be done?”

“Everyone goes on about the Airfield but no one has offered to buy it ,or gave any ideas about what to use it as ,so what does that tell you .”

“FromMendip, Not with hindsight, but with foresight Filton could be profitable. It couldn't be a major passenger hub, but would be perfect for freight, business, training, and engineering - exactly what it was used for until recently. BAe don't need it for flying aircraft bits around now, and It looks almost as though it has been made deliberately underused, so they can justify closing it and making the big fast bucks by selling the land for housing. It's their land, of course, so they can do it, just like I could sell my car, no matter what the world may think.

But what a waste! It could have been a fantastic place to mend and service aircraft. It has a freight rail line heading for what may soon be a deepwater container port. The M4 and M5 can be reached without passing more than 50 houses. And that lovely runway, where I learned to fly! Every pilot who ever flew a 747 full of Green party members to Rio for their next environmental conference began his or her training in much the same way - so much better than getting in the way at Bristol Airport.

It would be nice to think a knight in shining aircraft will come up with a rescue plan, but I think it's too big for that, and probably too near to town. It is sad, very sad, and when the houses are built, and we see 5,000 more cars trying to get down the A38 to the Jobcentres, we may think that maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. But we won't be knocking the houses down and building a new airfield.

For the record, it may not be the longest civil (or military for that matter) runway in the UK, but at 91 metres wide, it has no peer. That's the problem.”

“With hindsight Filton would have made a better airport site than Lulsgate though in the 1950s when Lulsgate opened and indeed right up until the late 1980s there was no indication that airports like Bristol would ever amount to much and didn't need a bigger site. This began to change first with the arrival of the late Les Wilson as MD in the early 80s, the later privatisation of the airport and the emergence of a new aviation industry with the low cost airlines in this century.

In the 1990s the environmental lobby was in full swing and when Bae applied to turn Filton into a city airport around 1996 an inspector rejected the idea following a public enquiry.

Apart from 'nimbyistic' objections it would not have been easy to turn Filton into a full-blown airport. The airport operator, unless it was the site owner/occupier, would have little incentive to provide all the facilities expected of a modern airport. The Lulsgate owners have spent £50-100 million in upgrading facilities in the past 15 years since privatisation and have earmarked another £150 million for further expansion. They've done this partly to enhance the value of their investment. It's far less easy with the operator being a tenant.

At least the Post has not perpetuated the myth about Filton's incredibly long runway this time. At 2467 metres it's nowhere near the longest civil airport runway in the country though it is one of the widest. Heathrow is nearly 4,000 metres, Gatwick over 3,300 metres, Stansted and Manchester over 3,00 metres. Birmingham, East Midlands, Prestwick, Doncaster-Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow and even Newquay all have longer runways than Filton.

Filton would have needed to extend its runway to cope with a genuine long haul network. Birmingham Airport's runway is longer than Filton's but its management realises that it's too short if it wants to become a contender for any serious displaced Heathrow long haul traffic (which it does). It has planning permission to extend its runway to 3,000 metres and it's likely to be completed within a year or so.

Lulsgate is a regional airport like Liverpool, Leeds-Bradford, East Midlands, Newcastle, Cardiff, Southampton and a number of others and, like them, is never likely to be anything beyond that. It attracted Continental daily - slightly less in winter - to New Jersey for five years (the smallest UK airport in terms of passenger numbers ever to feature regular scheduled transatlantic flights, except for Prestwick in the post-war years). It lost the route when Continental gained access to Heathrow. None of the airports I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph have ever had regular scheduled routes to the USA and still don't.

Lulsgate is the 9th busiest UK airport behind Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Luton, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Glasgow. It's current annual throughput is 5.86 million passengers a year with the next busiest being Liverpool at 4.79 million. Birmingham is the next biggest at 8.71 million though Lulsgate would be busier than Glasgow and nearly as busy as Edinburgh if the London passengers were taken out of the Scottish airports' passenger figures - Bristol is too close to London for a route to the capital.

Locally Cardiff currently handles 1.06 million passengers a year, Exeter 705,000, Bournemouth 641,000 and Newquay 177,000. Only Manchester has anything like a reasonable inter-continental route network outside the main London airports but it's negligible compared with Heathrow.

The new generation of wide-bodied long-haul aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 will remove some of the problems of short runways such as the one at Lulsgate (2011 metres long). Currently Lulsgate has two long haul charters each week in summer using wide-bodied Boeing 767s - Florida and Cancun, Mexico though the latter needs an en route fuel stop outbound.

Yes, Filton would have been better but Lulsgate is much busier than most UK regional airports.”