There must be thousands of people living around Heathrow who quite like the idea of expansion. I see these newspapers are popping through people's letterboxes.....

Can you see Heathrow actually fully closing ?

This is the bosses at Heathrow chucking their toys out of the pram - again.

Heathrow has hit it's capacity as it has realistically expanded as much as possible. Transport links are straining and the air corridors must be full.

As a non expert surely the best answer is to open another airport somewhere else where traffic is currently lighter ?

Building an island in the Thames does sound silly but the isle of grain sounded realistic.

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Lets be careful out there !

They can level Hayes Town and turn it into Terminal 6 public conveniences. It will be an improvement..

That would put the car parks out near Abbots Rugby club..

Unless this thing is checked it will take over acres of West London. Don't for a moment think they want to stop at Harmondsworth they don't

I thought Hayes Town WAS the s**thouse for Heathrow Airport

That's not very constructive F T.

Would be an absolute economic disaster to close Heathrow, can never see it happening. All the past and future investment in transport infrastructure (Crossrail, HS2, Heathrow Connect & Express) would have been in vain. Plus, it's not the governments property to close anyway.

There's still capacity at Stansted and Gatwick, the government should improve the rail links to those first to reduce the travel time to London before building any new runways. As for Heathrow expansion options, I prefer the new runway to the south west over the reservoirs, this would decrease stacking which is wasteful of fuel, create air pollution and unnecessary aircraft noise.

Building Boris Island or the Isle of Grain airport are both non-starters because they are completely detached from population centres and the infrastructure to move passengers in would take this country more than 20 years to build. They are both completely in the wrong place, whereas Heathrow is extremely well connected to existing and future transport connections.

Think it's a coincidence that Boris seems to support every scheme that is outside London and not on his turf?

Heathrow will never close it will always be the prime airport for London given the proximity and the transport connections to the city.

The vested interests are simply about working to ever increase their own future earnings and using a straw man argument to justify it.

They want to enlarge it because a larger airport (with another runway or two) can get more planes in (cargo and passenger (for use as a hub)).

For BAA more planes= more earnings= happier shareholders. They see growth as fundamental to keep the shareholder happy and will continue to look for it wherever they can and sod anyone's concerns who gets in their way.

The corporation will therefore use scare tactics to try and reach their end conclusions and that is all they are.

The quickest way to free up space at Heathrow would be to move the cargo facility out and use that for passengers, but BAA wouldn't countenance that as they want their cake and too eat it.

Cargo can pretty much go anywhere, it doesn't have to be brought in to close to London.

I wonder what the local population really think re Heathrow expansion? Anyone know if a survey has ever been carried out in Hillingdon?

I got a questionnaire that I returned to the council a while back. I think the vast majority was 'no' ?

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Lets be careful out there !

You are starting to sound like BAA's press officer.......

The support the march/occupation events JMcD generated amply demonstrated the local feeling about expansion.