Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggy J
Why aren't we considering a new airport somewhere further north?
|
Perhaps because the ones that are elsewhere - Midlands, Manchester, etc have spare capacity and not enough demand? You'd need both airlines, passengers, and cargo hauliers to want to use other areas. With the high density of population in the South East, airports in demand will be those close to this location.
A major part of the problem is the need for interconnectivity between airlines. The smaller regional airports don't have the passenger flow to fill sufficient planes for the long haul stuff, excluding the once a week charters which obviously don't suit business. The regional airports thus have small feeder routes into the larger airports. Heathrow provides the hub connectivity and due to the capacity of Heathrow, Gatwick also has some hub offerings. We either allow that hub capacity to grow, by expansion, or we see our own airlines like BA start to falter as the regular traveller moves to Emirates or whoever.