If Heathrow is downgraded/closed

This is surely in RIPAS territory?

First of all it will take a very sudden change of heart from the committee to bring the Estuary airport back into the equation. I would be surprised if Heathrow was ever to close completely. I suspect a more likely scenario would be to retain part of it for use by private jets and/or as a maintenance base for aircraft, like Southend before easyjet moved in!

Heathrow won't close and it won't be downgraded, there are too many jobs that depend on it. Apart from those that actually work there you also have the businesses that depend on it and those that have located near to it simply because it is London's main airport, we talking well in excess of 100k, possibly closer to 200k.

The first thing the commission will recommend is using the other airports to full capacity, I think I read that Gatwick is at 80% while Stansted and Luton are only around 50%. Rail-links to those airports will be improved and eventually an extra runway will be added an either Gatwick or Stansted or possibly both. Heathrow will remain the main airport but it will have to farm out some of its less lucrative flights if it wants to get other in.

Boris Island is a joke, pretty much like the man who thought it up.

Not so much of a joke if you live under the glide path from Westminster to Heathrow for planes landing from the East (polluting the air with noise and exhaust fumes) every 2.5mins I'm sure you would think Boris had a good idea for planes to come in over water in the Thames estuary, and maybe connect Cross Rail or Euro Star in to the new terminal, if this could be feasible.

And it's been rejected for many, many years for a very good reason


Not so much a joke for the 70k people who live in and around West London and work at Heathrow and the 10s of thousands more who work for businesses who depend on London's main airport being there. They'd have to build a city the size of Leicester in Kent, its an utter fantasy but then when has that ever stopped Boris? Or the morons who think this is a reasonable idea?

Heathrow expansion should have happened decades ago but the only reason it hasn't happened is because of the large swath of marginal constituencies near Heathrow.

Ironically, from what I have read, most of the locals near Gatwick actually want another runway at Gatwick!

Plus Heathrow is not the only set of station on that line . I'm sure the good people of Hounslow will still want good links into central London.

Too many Foreign vested interests in the existing airports.

I agree- I'd hate for Heathrow to close. Fortunately it almost certainly NEVER will- unless flying is banned due to achieve  even more CO2 emission reductions! 

Expanding Manston airport for example would be much more feasible than Boris Island lol!

Indeed.

As I said earlier, people have been mooting this possibility for decades. (Anyone remember Maplin Sands?)

Boris merely repeated a well known proposal.

But it just takes one ignorant person to label it 'Boris Island' and everyone else follows like sheep, even if they are old enough to remember some or all of the previous incarnations of this idea.

Newham Council owned the Mungo Park estate in Havering and a big estate in Brentwood both were transferred 20 years ago? to the local authorities. I am sure the business rate income from Boris Island would interest Kent County Council. The Deep Sea container port opposite Boris Island, in Essex, also benefit from better rail links.

Manston was the most bombed part of England during WW2, but you are very unlikely to get as big a bang as the Richard Montgomery.