Streetlife

I argued against the notion that aircraft noise was a problem in Tooting.  BUT I am dead against any expansion of Heathrow and friends of mine were among the activists who kicked up a stink a year or so ago...

Yes of course there should be a third runway, and probably a fourth.  For pity's sake - Amsterdam Schipol has 6!

I have to agree with Matthew G.

Airports such as Paris Charles De Gaulle, Frankfurt and Amsterdam Schipol have more than 3 runways and High Speed Rail. 

I so wish we could have a third runway at Heathrow. The alternatives are no more than niceties. Ridiculously expensive and certainly not convenient. 

It's about time the politicians acted logically rather than vote-winning.

At least the chances of a rail connection to LHR from South of the river are looking a little brighter at present.

Best - Ian Bull

No it is not the only obvious solution and expanding Heathrow will be a massive vote loser. The Evening Standard campaign seems unbalanced and hysterical. Heathrow is in the wrong place. Schipol, Charles de Gaul and Frankfurt are all well located with runways that do not require a flight path over the centre of large urban populations with the attendant noise pollution and risk of aircraft damage.. The obvious solution is a brand new airport in the Thames estuary which has been proposed by bold inovative and enlightended planners repeatedly since the 1970's. Quite simply Britain derserves to be a business back water if we cant see the obvious and implement a bold solution. Hong Kong managed to build a new airport on an island with very little difficulty. Yes it will be expensive but a large construction project such as this would be just the stimulus our economy needs. Why do we continue to debate and fudge we should just get on with the right solution.

I agree with David C that Heathrow is the wrong place for a big international airport that stands a chance of competing in the long run with Schipol, etc.  It is too close to the big population centres, and too hemmed in by major motorways.  There is barely space for the third runway.  None for any more.  If you're in a hole stop digging is what I say.

And Caroline, noise may not be an issue in Tooting - the planes are much higher there.  It is in Battersea (where I live), Wandsworth and Putney.  Fine for you.  Not for us.

But I'm unconvinced about whether a big new airport is such a viable alternative either.  I think we just have to admit that the UK has lost this particular race, and that a new airport would buy us a few years at most, at terrible cost.  This is a consequence of bad decisions made generations ago that it are too late to reverse.  We should be looking for ways to make the best of a bad job.  The UK economy doesn't benefit a whole lot from the pure transit traffic - we can wave goodbye to that without too much angst.  But poor connections to the rest of the world, e.g. China, for businessmen is a worry.  We need our best engineering brains working on how we can deal with that problem without either flogging a dead horse or buying a white elephant, to mix metaphors.

Am I the only person effected by plane noise?  It drives me bonkers!  It stops at 11pm and then starts again at 5.30am.  I sleep with earplugs in my ears and if they pop out I'm up with the planes! It is so much worse that when I moved to Tooting Bec, 14 years ago.  I don't know what I'll do if it escalates further!

We hardly hear the planes for the traffic noise, if one walks down the road in the late evenings or early mornings when the buses, trucks don't thunder down the road and car don't whizz by, it's amazing how quiet it is.
I wonder how on earth one can continue a converstaion on a mobile phone when on the high street on on abus. It's unbearably noisy and even if you pop into a shop hoping to be able to hear better, there's music, people talikg loudly and children on their scooters and whatnots.

I think noise pollution is terrible and in general hearing is affected whether it is planes or not. I have lived a few minutes off the airport right in the flight path years ago when the deleterious effects of noise pollution were unheard of, I know how terrible it is to have a plane almost landing on your roof and the 4 turbo jets engines screaming overhead in the middle of the night. Not good, not good at all.

In the end it's finances that dictate and probably Heathrow is not the ideal location, having said that, all the houses around were bought us and are falling to bits after the third runway proposal was ditched. Isn't that a waste too? Think of a ll the families forced to leave for nothing.

Heathrow expansion is inevitable, unless UK plc want's to be in the backwater of world trade. I don't wish it, but so far, I simply cannot see any alternative. If the noise was too great , I guess I would move elsewhere.
P.S. I lived bang opposite Gatwick Airport from the start and moved when the noise annoyed me.

I grew up in the v close proximity of Heathrow, so close that you could read the writing on the underbelly of the airplane.  They gave us all free double glazing because they realised that childrens' hearing was being negatively impacted. I still have bad hearing.

Despite this, I've never gotten used to aircraft noise.  I guess I will be one of those who has to move!! 

I don't like the expression 'UK plc'.  It suggests that the government is the boss and I am their worker.  In my mind, the exact opposite is the correct position.  And I also think a country is not about profit and loss.

I have to admit I quite like what little noise I hear - I hear 'different' as in military helo's compared to the ones which land at the Heliport.  Ordinary planes going over don't have an impact.  Strongly miss Concorde plying over daily.  and yes - I do live in Battersea.  I live near the heliport - not far froma rail line line, the river and a main road so I suppose I have learned to block outside noises.

We do need more capacity for planes .. we are losing out in the business world, which has an effect on us all ultimately.

Of course those who live near the proposed estuary development are against it - as are those who live near Heathrow .. NIMBY folk.  Personally I don't care where it is because I don't fly - anywhere.  Gatwick would be my preferred expansion platform if I had one because it is easier for me to get to.  But that is purely domestic traffic I am on about - where would we be without the cargo flights???  If they are finding little expansion for landing facilities, we will definitely all pay the consequences.

I agree it is crazy to focus on Heathrow, which has almost reached its limits already, and already has a huge impact on Londoners. There ARE other options that look further to the future.

But UK PLC???? Of course we need to have a healthy economy, but the demands of business  and profit dictate so much of what we do - including allowing quite destructive developments in inappropriate places, not because it is actually where it is needed, but because 'we' have to ensure large profits for the construction industry. Ditto overfishing and not controlling toxic emissions because you don't want to constrain 'business'. The logic of this is leading us to destroy what makes life worth living, and ultimately may destroy the environment so much as to make it uninhabitable. Many other species have become extinct through this process before, and we aren't immune! We have to stop and THINK!!

Does it matter if UK ends up in a "backwater" on this issue (i.e. not having the biggest, most connected airport in Europe)? 

I may have missed something, but I thought that the entire world economy is facing a massive energy crisis - the consequences being that the price and ownership of energy resources will be increasingly political (by that I mean possibly with conflict).  As UK is pretty much dependent on others for their energy supplies, we don't really have much political muscle in this game. 

Finding alternatives to fuel cars have been slow enough; do we think that finding alternatives to fuel jet engines will be seamless!  Ha ha, in the UK (well London at least), we're still struggling with being "bike-friendly" :-)

Come on! With these issues looming large, isn't competing with others to have the biggest airport ultimately a bit pedestrian!  What will we do with the airports when the aircraft are grounded - double up as shopping malls, prisons maybe?   Let others invest in ever bigger airports - I say we should be much more inventive and be looking to invest in and build infrastructure for projects that are innovative and that will take us into the future.  (was anyone else disappointed that all Tom the inventor - Apprentice winner last year - has come up with was a new shaped nail file).

It doesn't have to just be in the area of transport, we can find any number of other ways to lead the pack.  We have the creativity and talent in this country to do that (and I am sure there are enough people wanting to make a name for themselves and get on the Queen's Birthday Honour list!!). 

Building ever bigger airports just to keep up with the Jones' (i.e. Europe with Schipol etc) and to make sure we get invited to all the dinner parties (business with China).  yawn yawn yawn! 

Apologies, it is often the case that the people who write comments like these are not the ones that have the ideas!!  I use to be a net contributor (as opposed to a net consumer) and an ideas person but the stress of doing so as a squeezed middle-classer in the dog-eat-dog Britain of past years (as well as raising happy future citizens) took its toll and I am having to relearn how to be a human being again and to live a creative and spiritual life.  So it is my hope that our nation invests wisely in business as well as in its people.   

and.......I have sympathy for those who have spoken here about noise pollution.  It is a very real issue for all of us living in modern cities and often people don't have the option to just move away from it. 

Why should we accept Heathrow expansion as inevitable?  For me, Heathrow is in the wrong place -- and it is also on a very small site, less than 5 square miles compared to 12.5 for Charles de Gaulle.  Speaking of which -- although I am not enthusiastic about an airport in the Estuary, the French bit the bullet and built Charles de Gaulle, which was farther from the centre of Paris and with room to expand.  Where would they be if they had insisted that only Orly was the "logical" airport for expansion?

We keep being told that we have to expand Heathrow because our continental rivals have connectivity to more of China's major cities than we do.  But what do we find when we look at BAA's own figures?  There are more flights to China from Heathrow (4858/year) than there are from CdG (3722), or Amsterdam (2278) or Frankfurt (3495).  The only city available from Paris or Amsterdam but not Heathrow is Guangzhou; from Frankfurt (only) there are also flights to Shenyang.  There are 3,539 flights every year from Heathrow to Hong Kong--more than 3 times as many as from CdG or Frankfurt or Amsterdam.  If we really want to be connected to emerging cities, maybe it's time to shift some flights from Hong Kong.

Having been woken at 4.45am or thereabouts on more than one occasion recently, by aircraft noise over Tooting Graveney (despite some peoples vociferous defence that there is no aircraft noise in Tooting, from threads earlier this year :), it is definitely something that needs to be factored in to discussions around expansion or other ways of improving connectivity of Heathrow with other parts of the world.

Just last week, Heathrow started Phase 2 of changing the way they're using the runways - I'm not sure if this would account for MY noise experience, but it's certainly worthwhile being up to date on changes and proposals...

To that end here are some hopefully useful links:

• http://www.heathrowairport.com/noise/noise-in-your-area/operational-freedoms-trial/phase-2
• http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/article/11295/no_to_incessant_aircraft_noise
• http://www.hacan.org.uk/ - scroll down a bit for info on the new trial started last week
• http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/info/200135/get_involved/449/heathrow_expansion_and_aircraft_noise/7

here's to some peaceful sleep :-\

I agree that Heathrow is in the wrong location for expansion with so many planes having to approach it by flying across such a huge, densely populated urban area.  What about the risk of terrorism as well as the pollution?  And noise is a problem if you are under the flight path, certainly where quite a lot of planes are converging and turning to join the flight path around the Balham, Clapham South, Battersea areas.  When the last trial was happening it got noticeably noisier, largely because on some days the noise was relentless and there were more early morning wake-ups at 4.30.

I grew up living very close to Heathrow and the noise was not as bad as where I live now as there we weren't under the flight path unless the wind changed direction!  The gradual descent of planes across London affects a large area and was something introduced a few years ago to reduce the impact of planes suddenly descending on the approach to landing around the Barnes area. 

BAA seem to be at the forefront of the campaign for a third runway at Heathrow - what a surprise when they have the most to gain from it!

If we need a great deal more airport capacity then the Thames Estuary airport would be the front runner solution for me because it will have less impact on London with planes arriving and taking off over the sea.  However, I wonder if business travel is really going to keep on increasing when advances in technology enable better and better real-time communication across the globe?  A great deal of air travel seems to be low cost airlines packed with leisure travellers.