Forums Forums Wirral Information Ask - Wiki Wirral Heathrow's third Runway

Not exactly Wirral, but environmental matters affect us here in Wirral too.

Why doesn't Rachel reeves announce that the third runway will be reserved for the sole use of zero-carbon aircraft. This would more than meet environmental objections as it would encourage the development of hydrogen or synthetic green fuelled aircraft or even battery ones.

These are quite likely to be in service by 2035, the date when the proposed Runway will be built.

Why at Heathrow? We have just seen at Washington DC what happens with congested airspace and the airspace around Heathrow is congested enough.

We should be removing business tax relief for international travel, most business passenger travel is totally unnecessary these days. The relief is effectively subsidising pollution creation.

Spot the guy who doesn't do big business internationally.

Can you explain why it is "necessary" rather than "expected"?

Loads of people like to keep the "jollies" system going. As soon as we could we introduced videoconferencing but it was a number of years before that would work internationally.

Apparently it's congested because to many planes are in a holding pattern, it wouldn't be congested if they could get them on the ground quicker, hence the need for more runways.

Its the sheer quantity of aircraft flying in and out of one area that is the hazard, currently around half a million a year, even more protected airspace and holding stacks will have to be created to allow for another runway and no more flight paths will be created. This in turn creates less flexibility for avoidance.

Concentrating air traffic is never a good idea, creating a runway somewhere else would be much safer. In recent years we have sold off many of our military air fields, we had loads of them including in the south west.

Increasing capacity will have a knock affect to other infrastructure, especially the car park also known as the M25. What happened to decentralisation?

I see Reeves' 1940 statement has been clarified to restrict it to the southwest, elsewhere runways have been created since then such as Manchester, Liverpool etc.

The thread is not about Heathrow versus regional airports but rather how to make it less damaging to the environment wherever its built.

Reserving it for use only by zero carbon aircraft would encourage the development of such aircraft of the synthesis of 'green' fuel and meet the objections of environmentalists/

There is no reason to restrict flying if they don't damage the environment. There is no shortage of energy. and you would find a number of regional airports that take passengers to Heathrow for international flights would switch to battery or hydrogen craft to get a landing and take off slot at Heathrow.

Airbus has an active program of development of zero emission aircraft and has dedicated an A380 for use in this. It contains sufficient space in teh fuselage for fuel tanks and has an engine Nacelle mounted on teh fuselage where engines can be experimented with. I believe they are partnered with Rolls Royce in this.

It seems to me that the government should be supporting this and dedicating a runway at Heathrow to it woud be a very good way of doing this.