Great Western Coffee Shop

FGW and XC services are set to become even more packed if proposals for a new 4 runway hub airport at Heyford gets the go ahead.
The station (plus one on the Chiltern line) would be upgraded for services, as well as a spur from HS2 to create a massive interchange.

http://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/local/could-airport-be-earmarked-for-heyford-1-4231345

DFP, Btline, it won't happen. A look at the relevant chart of the area:

(http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/Boyamijealous_7108a707/Chart.jpg)

shows too much around it, such as:
RAF Brize Norton
Oxford Airport
Weston on the Green airfield(used for parachute training)
High energy aerials, which must not be overflown below 6,400 ft
At least one duck*
Hinton in the Hedges airfield(parachute and glider training)
Thurweston airfield
Bicester.
(Upper Heyford is north east of Brize Norton, and is the circle with a cross, meaning "Disused aerodrome")

Shift all that out of the way, you have a chance. But Brize Norton has just added the Hercules from Lyneham to an already busy military base, and Oxford has expansion plans. MP Sir Tony Baldry isn't wrong when he says:


(* My little joke - it denotes a bird sanctuary or breeding ground. Avoid overflight between April and October)

So where else will a 4 runway hub go other than Abingdon?
Don't say Heathrow, as that's "millions of people" in the way (on flightpaths)

Other airfields can be shut down easily.
Bicester isn't on the flightpath.
Aerials can be lowered or moved.

Interesting idea but I'm afraid the ducks will have their way. I used to live less than 10 miles from USAF upper heyford when it was active and boy did we know it. All joking aside being in such a busy airspace area I can't see it happening. We recently camped near brize Norton and can confirm how busy it has become now lyneham has closed.

Not sure where near Abingdon.  The RAF base wasn't that large and is very near to the town.  No space to make 4 runways.  There is also the proposed reservoir site near there.


Probably.  Brize Norton could be moved elsewhere. But where will the light aircraft land?


Yes but one of them is the main television transmitter (i.e. not a repeater) for a large area.  I am sure the people of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire would still like television.  Finding another site for that is not going to be trivial. 

South of Abingdon, same site as where the possible reservior will go.
There is room for 4 full sized runways, plus space for a replacement of RAF B Norton.

I can tell you where it won't go, and that's Upper Heyford.

Whilst I know a lot more about flying, aircraft, and airports than you do, I don't have an easy answer for where a four-runway airport will go. Heathrow is in exactly the wrong place, being west of a major conurbation with a prevailing westerly wind. It was built at a time when aircraft were small, as was London compared to today. Its location was an accident of sorts. Fairey Aviation were building aircraft at Northolt in 1928, when they were given notice to quit by the air ministry, who wanted it for themselves. Their chief test pilot had made a forced landing three years earlier, in a field by a tiny hamlet called Heathrow. He remembered how flat the land was, and Fairey bought 148 acres of farmland for the initial aerodrome, adding to it over the years. There were no runways - the tail-dragger aircraft aircraft of the day were not good in crosswinds, so simply took off into the wind, whichever direction it was coming from.

The airport was, in short, stolen by the government, under Lord Balfour during WWII under the pretext of wartime need. Had we known it then, we would have called it Thiefrow much earlier. It was never used militarily other than as a diversionary airfield. The real reason was to expand and build a civil airport  Fairey was offered compensation at the value of farmland in 1939, which at ^10 an acre was pretty much what he had paid in 1928. He objected strongly. Legal proceedings continued for 20 years, before he was given ^1.6 million. The agriculture ministry complained in 1944 about the loss of good farm land. The first concrete runway was first laid out around 1945, and there's some cute film  here (http://archive.org/details/london_airport_TNA). In 1946, the notion of a new runway to the north of the aerodrome was put forward, leading to fury in villages that would need to be demolished (sound familiar?). Champagne corks popped in 1953, when the planned new runway was cancelled. In that year too, the biggest mistake was made, when work began on the second runway. That should have been the moment that we realised that aircraft were going to get bigger, faster, noisier, and more frequent, and built a brand new hub either north or south of London, where prevailing winds would not have meant approaches or departures over London. The French did this in Paris, and have far less trouble with noise complaints. Noise aside, imagine if that poor Concorde had taken off on runway 09 at LHR - it would have come down in the middle of Hounslow.  Hindsight is, of course, the clearest of types of vision.

The rest is history. I'll correct you on a few points you made in your last post.
1) Bicester may well be on the flight path. Brize Norton's runways are 08 and 26, but Oxford is 01/19 - north to south. If you are building 4 runways, it makes sense to have at least one on a different heading, to give options when the wind isn't just westerly. In any case, the highest volume of complaints about noise at Heathrow comes not from people on the flight path, but those a short distance to the side, who can hear the noise for longer.
2) Closing airfields causes just as much emotion as opening them. The town of Carterton (or Cartoontown as my daughter, who lives there calls it) exists because of RAF Brize Norton.  And look at Filton or Lyneham.
3) The height of the aerials isn't the deciding issue, it is what comes out of them. It is high energy electromagnetic radiation, of the sort likely to interfere with on-board systems and even cause health problems to people who pass by regularly - like flight crew.  Look just north-west of Upper Heyford, and you will see an ordinary aerial, 637 feet above sea level, or 328 feet above the surrounding terrain. With respect to ellendunne, I think that is the TV transmitter, and I'm not going to speculate as to what the aerials may be for. May be microwave telephone or satellite link, may be a Klingon death ray, but I won't be flying over it.

My choice? Do nothing now. The newest aircraft type currently flying commercially is the Boeing 787 Dreamilner. That will fly 290 passengers from Tokyo to a gentle (and quiet) touchdown in Bristol airport. It will be joined soon by Airbus' A350 XWB, with similar qualities of range and versatility. A day may come very soon when Heathrow is used primarily for A380's and the 40-year-old 747. It would be daft to build a massive airport only to find that the airlines prefer to use newer aircraft into regional airports. Back in 2008, I flew to Los Angeles from Bristol and home from San Francisco via some windswept Dutch place that sounded like Shithole, yet was anything but. If some fool hadn't backed a catering truck into my outbound plane, it would have taken 3 hours less than fannying about through Heathrow, with no car parking to think about. It was much quicker coming home than the London option, although it seems a bit daft flying over your own house, but not seeing it again for 2 hours.

If I were in charge, I would commission a study by engineers, ecologists, environmentalists and entrepreneurs from across the political spectrum, appointing no-one over the age of 36, and no-one with any prior link to aviation. I would give them terms of reference that would say "Sort it all out, please" with knighthoods if they do and public ridicule if they don't. I would give them 2 years, during which time I would allow dual mode working at Heathrow, subject to a manifesto commitment not to extend it without cross-party agreement, and a 150 year moratorium on raising the question of a third runway should the current government decide it wasn't necessary.  Should the need for huge hub airports be demonstrated, I would then consider Manston, Boris Island, a proper second runway at Gatwick, conversion of Northolt to civil use, Biggin Hill, HS2, and anything else that seemed likely to help, before standing down at the next election, accepting the peerage, writing my memoir "Why You Can't Get Anything Important Done Unless You Have A Dictatorship (pref Communist)", and decamping to somewhere nice and warm to sit out the arctic conditions likely to savage our Septic Isle soon.

An excellent piece of stone throwing FTN a possible barrage of ideas. wonder where the ripples might spread.

Just to add one other point re Upper Heyford where would the 10s of thousands of workers needed to run a 4 runway airport live? I'm sure the academics won't wont them in Oxford plus they own alot of land around the town and would be quite influential in stopping developement and thus it would be Banbury that would probably have to expand quite considerably.

The issue of housing would be quite a serious one in any area but I know from my own experience that there are a load of villgages in that area where this type of development would be a NoNo. In fact given the rate Banbury has expanded over the last 40 years I suspect it would struggle to find development space. Isn't there a well known MP that lives within 10 miles of Heyford?!

At one time it was rumoured that Greenham Common (which at the time had one of the longest runways in Europe) could be used as a regional airport but given that (a) most of the old runway was used as hardcore for the "new" A34 and (b) it is fairly closed to Heathrow with limited road links it was a non-starter and probably just down to urban myth.

Of course, going back to Heyford they could always knock down the military sites at Barford/Croughton and use them for development as they are not far away...

No airline will want to fly from Tokyo to Bristol (or Stansted for that matter).
They want to fly to a hub (i.e. Heathrow) for connections.

Larger aircraft allow more passengers and cheaper fares, but airlines won't want to lose slots so will keep frequencies up or add new routes.

The Dreamliner may be 15% quieter, but that's still too noisy for Heathrow. It's a smokescreen.

The proposed airport at Abingdon would have 4 parallel (E-W) runways, as would the Boris Island one. So The Upper Heyford flight paths would not pass over Bicester if the runways were thus alighted- of course there would still be noise, but LESS than at Heathrow, which would close. So an overall improvement.

The airport is near the South Midlands Development area, so loads of new housing is proposed for the area. The zone could be extended South West.

Of course, I realise that there are problems. But we HAVE two problems now. The fact that planes are flying over London, and we need more capacity.

Given his in depth knowledge and most interesting views expressed by FTN , I wonder if he should also be known as Four Runways, Now !

 ;D


Something I hadn't considered. More people work in Heathrow than in the city of Newcastle, I have read - about 75,000 in all. They wouldn't all fit into Hounslow Jobcentre at once to sign on.


I flew there once (not landing obviously) as part of a navigation exercise, learning how to fly through military zones. You can still see it from over Lyneham, a great gash in the landscape.

The other point worth making is the London airspace.
You say that the Upper Heyford area is busy with airstrips.

What about London City Airport and Heathrow. That's managed ok.
At the moment - assuming a Westerly wind, landing aircraft coming from the Epping or High Wycombe stacks pass over East London (Poplar) just where London City aircraft take off West, before turning North.
Both sets of aircraft pass near Canary Wharf and The Shard, but everything is controlled like clockwork.

It seems to me that Heathrow needs to be replaced long term with something bigger and better.  Everything else being equal putting the new airport North-West of London would make it accessable from both London and the North and West of England (without having to cross London which is the problem with Boris Island).

trouble is everythign else is not equal...

A new hub airport in the Oxford/Banbry Arc combined with HS2 would really allow the spread of growth across the UK, whilst still being convenient for London businessmen. Just think - you could land and be in Newcastle in less than 3 hours, Manchester in 1.

For Joe Public, Gatwick and Stansted airports would remain for holiday and other flights, and other bankers could use City airport.

I assume that Luton, Kent and Southend could be axed as well as Heathrow.

This article, posted on the BBC web site today, is relavent to this thread

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19570653 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19570653)

Dave

I posted this link on a different thread here - the 2003 LOX (London Oxford) proposal:

http://www.pleiade.org/projectzone/LOX/pdf/LOX02.1.3_airport_layout.pdf

Included not just 1 but 2 railway stations, the 'main' one having 8 platforms. I think there was also the intention to turn the A34 northbound to the M40 into a 4-lane motorway, although I'm not sure how it could be routed and a new road to Swindon. They assumed a number of developments would happen that they wouldn't need to pay for.

These days they wouldn't have to worry about the cooling towers as an obstruction as they would be gone long before this could be built.

Either build a third runway at Heathrow or look at relocating it to the north west of London in Beds/Bucks as was seriously considered back in the 1960s. You could link it to the mainline from Euston or Marylebone.

I don't see Heyford or Abingdon as serious alternatives. (I recall the planes from USAF Upper Heyford as it was - mainly F1-11s and the odd B52 bomber - when my parents lived north west of Banbury in the 1970s). Heyford also has extensive underground installations to deal with as I believe there were serious refrigeration units based there to keep the specialised weaponry cool...... The communication masts at RAF Croughton (near Heyford) are I think military installations.

By the way, why has the government announced a link from Heathrow to the GWR mainline west of Heathrow to serve Reading and the west BEFORE it's been decided what to do about the airport problem itself?

I found this reply genie lay interesting but puzzled why it would practical to link it to the chiltern line when (from memory) the Oxford line runs very close to heyford.

The Chiltern line lies closest to Heyford as you used to see the landing lights from the train (I mean, of course, the late lamented Paddington to Wolverhampton via High Wycombe). It's very close to Ardley tunnel

I'm referring in my post to moving the airport to the Bletchley area which was very seriously proposed in the 1960s. I think the Wilson government canned the idea.

The Upper Heyford is in the triangle of the Chiltern and Oxford lines just South of Aynho Junction.  The village is nearer the Oxford line which has a Station.  The East end of the runway practically adjoins the Chiltern Line and the West end is about a mile from the Oxford line.

Thanks for clearing that up ellendune - having lived under one f the flight paths for the USAF aircraft (adderbury) I should have known!