London Mayor Proposes Offshore Heathrow Replacement

And now from the Good Luck With That Department:

Quote:

‘Boris Island’ airport may replace Heathrow
The London mayor plans to shut down the city’s main airport and build a new four-runway hub in the Thames estuary

By Chris Gourlay and Dipesh Gadher

WHEN the Queen opened Heathrow’s £4.3 billion terminal building earlier this year, it was supposed to herald a new era in state-of-the-art travel.

Instead, the launch of terminal 5 rapidly descended into farce, with dozens of flight cancellations, enormous check-in queues and thousands of items of luggage mislaid.

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Boris Johnson, the London mayor, has described Heathrow as “a planning error of the 1960s”.

Now his officials are drawing up proposals to close it and replace it with a 24-hour airport located on an artificial island in the Thames estuary.

“If you look at what is going on in other countries around the world - in Hong Kong, in Washington - it’s not impossible to move the capital’s biggest airport,” Johnson has said.

It may at first sound implausible, but proposals for an airport in the Thames have endured for almost 40 years.

Johnson favours a four-runway hub off Sheppey in Kent, which could easily be expanded to six runways because of minimal planning constraints. [Full Article]