Runway Picture by Flickr User sarahgoldsmith
Birmingham Airport has put itself forward as a “practically instantaneous” way to reduce the pressure on Heathrow amid debate over a proposed third runway at the London hub. Birmingham also claims to be the only airport with a significant planning consent for a runway extension already agreed.
“Birmingham is not seeking to transplant the Heathrow operation, but South East traffic could form an element of Birmingham’s wider portfolio,” an airport statement said. “Around 50% of the UK population is less than a two-hour drive from Birmingham. High speed rail could bring them much nearer, with central London only 40 minutes away, putting Birmingham in ‘Zone 4’ of the Underground Map.”
CEO Paul Kehoe said: “We have plenty of capacity and, linked to high-speed rail, we are uniquely positioned to not only claw back people from our own region, who make the long journey to Heathrow, but to attract passengers from the overheated South East. We will not just be London’s third runway as we have our own traffic – but by attracting those who waver towards Heathrow to use Birmingham instead, will create jobs and help to rebuild the local economy.”
An even better idea would be to use RAF Lyneham, which lies close to the M4 and main Paddington-Bristol railway. It is due to be closed next year and only needs a terminal, car parking, station and motorway link to be ready to take all Heathrow’s domestic and short-haul flights, at a fraction of the cost of the 3rd runway.
A high speed rail link (part of a London-Cardiff high speed line) could get passengers to and from Heathrow in 30 minutes and also bring them from Bristol and Cardiff.
Lyneham could serve the whole M4 corridor including Swindon, Reading, Chippenham, Bath and Bristol, as well as handling Heathrow’s local flights.
High speed rail links to Birmingham airport (and to a new terminal at RAF Lyneham as Jiminiy Cricket suggests) would be great – especially for people not based in London in the first place. Heathrow’s enough of a nightmare to get through as it is!
Turning Lyneham into a civilian airport linked by high speed train is a great idea because it would do far more for air travellers in the south of England than a 3rd Heathrow runway and create new jobs in the area instead of destroying them (which the Lyneham closure will do). And in green terms, it’s far better to make more use of an existing facility than to spend billions on tearing down houses and replacing with runways. Heathrow is already the world’s most disliked airport. Cramming more into it will just make it worse. However, Jiminy Cricket is jumping the gun a bit as Lyneham is scheduled to close as an RAF base in 2012, not next year.
Just done a bit more research and I see the 3rd Heathrow runway proposal is for a runway of 2,200 metres. Lyneham has two runways, of 2,386m and 1,826m. So technically better and much more flexible (not to mention already built). But Heathrow operator BAA is now reported to have given up on the 3rd runway (because the Conservatives oppose it and are likely to win the next election; how much money has that wasted?) and is pushing instead for a 6-runway airport on the Thames estuary. This is turning into a farce!
I didn’t realise the amount of people within a 2 hour drive, that’s a huge amount of people
It’s good to see all this interest, so I sent a link to the MP who covers Lyneham, James Gray, who replied as follows: “It may not surprise you to hear that I – and I am pretty certain 99% of those I represent – would be wholly opposed to re-using Lyneham as the third Heathrow runway. Anyhow, as I understand it, it would not be allowed by the CAA because of the delineation of the runways and the Lyneham escarpment.”
Not too surprising, I suppose – there are no votes in airports – but does anyone know if the lie of the land around Lyneham would really rule it out? It always seems pretty flat around there to me, especially compared with some of the airports I’ve flown in to.
This Lyneham proposal has been around longer than I guessed – since 1989, in fact. Here’s an extract from Jane’s Airports, Equipment and Services, published in June 2003:
“In 1989, the House of Commons Select Committee raised the idea of joint military/civil airports in the UK. At that time, the committee identified five airfields within a 60-mile radius of London which were under utilised. Two of these were Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and Lyneham in Wiltshire …. Surely, the UK government should be looking at the possibility of utilising these existing facilities and building the infrastructure necessary to provide the airport capacity which is required in the South East.”
Since my original post, I’ve seen the latest cost estimate for the Heathrow third runway, which is £8 billion. That, no doubt, would double in reality, but even £8bn would surely pay for upgrading Lyneham to major passenger airport standard AND providing a new Paddington-Heathrow-Lyneham-Bristol high speed railway (or, more likely, upgrading the existing line, which like the M4 passes within a couple of miles of Lyneham).