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I have lived near Heathrow during two periods of my life, the last up until 4 and a bit years ago when I lived in a place called Bedfont which is adjacent to Terminal 4 on the south side of the Airport. I must confess to being a great fan of all things that fly be they machines or birds.

The maisonette I lived in was on the first and second floors of the block, north facing and parallel to the southern runway. Heathrow is an exciting place which does have its own buzz…

Rush Hours

The amount of traffic is not constant; there are definite time slots for arrivals and departures such as when I used to fly to and from the States, it seemed that all those incoming flights arrived between 6:30 and 8:00 in the morning, there was a similar slot later on for inbound from the Far East and the Antipodes.

There are only two runways at Heathrow so whilst they alternate them; the simple principle for safety’s sake is that aircraft only move in one direction. If incoming aircraft are landing on the northern runway after flying in from the west and over Windsor, then outgoing planes use the southern runway and take off flying east and over London.

My favourite view was the evening rush hour which consists mainly of short haul flights either internal or mainland Europe. On a clear Autumn or Winters evening when they were approaching from the east over London, you could see them stacked up one behind the other at different heights on final approach, lights twinkling merrily stretched out way back to the other side of the City. They would be landing one every 90 seconds which is both amazing and mad.

The Third Runway

Do they need a third runway at Heathrow – YES.

Should they get one – NO.

Boris Johnson described Heathrow as a planning mistake and he is right because in simple terms, if we were starting again, would we put our most important Airport there ? Of course we wouldn’t so, as the base costs of building the third runway and building a brand new airport in the Thames Estuary are so close, it must make sense to build the new one off the Isle of Grain. Building a third runway would be totally nuts but there are other issues to consider.

We need to start with an appreciation that whilst the Estuary might allow for a relatively quick build of a totally new airport, it is highly unlikely to lead to a sudden closing of Heathrow once it is operational with everything moving to the Estuary overnight, that just won’t happen and can’t happen.

The Heathrow Effect

Living where I did in Bedfont, probably every other person I knew either worked on the airport in one capacity or the other or for a business associated with it. I was once told that the economic effects of Heathrow touched businesses stretching from Park Royal in West London, all the way down the Thames Corridor to Reading.

The range of services starts with the obvious aircrew, ground crew, aircraft maintenance, security, Police, baggage handlers, cleaners, people who work in the shopping and catering areas and so forth. But beyond that Heathrow is a major freight handling airport which means that there are a considerable number of jobs connected with that as are the Airline Catering businesses.

If you take into account all direct and indirect businesses and jobs, Heathrow probably accounts for a minimum of 200,000 going upwards when you consider all the ancillary activities concerned with people who live in the area needing food, clothing, accommodation, hotels, off-airport parking, car hire, transportation and so on.

The point being that moving all that overnight, even if it could be done, would deliver economic disaster to that part of West London, it would need to be phased and undoubtedly both would run in parallel for some years, possibly it would contract to just one runway for freighter flights, probably the southern one as redevelopment starts on the northern side closest to the M4. Eventually though over a 10 year period, Heathrow would cease to operate as an airport.

Building in the Thames Estuary

Would it be cheaper ? The answer is no if you factor into the picture the additional infrastructure work required which would be considerable but that is not really an impediment so much as a golden opportunity.

If it were built, it would be better if we didn’t suffer from a lack of imagination and seized the opportunity to build something more than just a ‘new airport’, we need to see it as fully fledged “Transport Hub”.

It is not enough to just hook up with the Channel Tunnel Line, we need to go further and dig tunnels under the Thames Estuary to provide road and rail links between Kent and Essex. We need to look at the urban development required on both sides to accommodate the people needed to operate such an airport and the commercial infrastructure to support it.

Done properly and because it is a “green if rather wet, field”, the opportunity to design and build a stunning and practical series of buildings – totally exciting and possible.