London's super hub, would it work?

Real World Aviation
1

London’s airports, why create a huge airport when you can just create a bunch of medium-sized ones?! It’s fair to say that much like London itself that its airport situation is a complete and utter mess, in fact, “London Southend” isn’t even in London. But what if there was a solution, a solution that would transform air travel to and from London?

As one of the prisoners England didn’t want, I feel as though it’s my responsibility to help the mother country and help them devise a plan, not just any old plan, a super plan! Here’s my proposal, connect Heathrow and Gatwick via train to create some sort of super hub that would basically act like having planes depart from different terminals. It would relieve all the problems of Heathrow while providing travellers with a quick and easy to transfer between flights, so why do we need this?

Well firstly, in normal times Heathrow is running at nearly 100% capacity, a seriously unsustainable number, a single flight emergency could cause hours of delays for other aircraft. Heathrow tried to get approval for a 3rd runway but the court ruled against it because apparently choosing to live next to an airport is reason enough to complain about said airport expanding, a perfectly logical statement. Meanwhile, Gatwick is in a rural area, away from the hustle and bustle of London with room to expand because cows on a field really can’t complain about being moved, this presents us with an interesting situation but what are the details of my plan?

Gatwick is 40km away from Heathrow, currently, it takes 1hr 27min via 3 trains to get between the two airports however a train travelling the distance at 200km/h would take only 12 minutes, a monumental saving. Customers could, therefore, go through security at Heathrow, catch a train to Gatwick and only be there about 20 minutes later than if flying out of Heathrow. Customers could also connect between flights using the train which could run every few minutes, this could eliminate the need for a 3rd runway and use the empty fields of Gatwick to possibly add a new runway in a few decades with no immediate pressure to do so, it would also provide jobs for the U.K people and used to connect with the current Heathrow Express services into London city. So are there any problems with my plan?

To put it bluntly yes and the biggest one is money, it may cost billions of pounds to get the train and where would the post-security train station at Heathrow go? How long would it take to build? Is it worth it? There are many of those issues but I think it fixes the mess, the hustle, the congestion and the pure inconvenience of London’s airports, not to mention that Gatwick could possibly get rid of Stansted and Southend which are 64km away from the city centre. What do you think?

20697_1556195458
20697_15561954581280×739 549 KB

Could Gatwick fix Heathrow’s problems? image credit

14 Likes
2

First of all this is a really interesting idea/proposal. Nonetheless I don’t think this is economically viable as you would need to build a high speed trail link at least to the main tracks running to LGW. Also you would then have to integrate it into the existing rail services running on the tracks or would need to build an own track just for this service (or rather two tracks, one for each direction).

Furthermore you would need many trains to run a tube like service, and this doesn’t seem economically viable to me.

Probably a post-security train every 30 minutes or so would be something to consider, as would be a outside security high-speed rail station at the airports to have smooth connections to destinations within the UK by rail in my opinion, but connecting two airports steaming less over such a long distance sounds too good to be possible to me.

1 Like
3

The only thing I can think of is that you were extradited?

4

one, this might wk, but the real issue is, besides money, BA is saying it might not reopen its gatwick routes. Now some otger airlines could fly to gatwick, but are they even owned by the same compony? Also, buisness peopke wanting to arive at heathrow and gp strait to meetings qould gave some issues

5

This sounds really cool! What would the cost be and how long would the train be?

6

This wouldn’t work. Too inefficient and expensive.

7

  • London Southend - Not in London, in Southend-on-Sea.

  • London Stansted - Not in London, near Stansted and Bishop’s Stortford.

  • London Luton - Not in London, attached onto Luton.

  • London Gatwick - Not in London, but the closest out the 4, between Crawley and Horley.

What’s in common with all these 4 airports? No not they’re not in London, but they were all RAF bases, and Stansted still holds a little of this heritage.

In London?

  • London Heathrow - In London, being the second international airport in Britain, built for commercialised travel.

  • London City - In London, was purpose built and to this date being expanded on an old dock which was runway shaped.

Airports in London are purpose built for the job, and have no room to expand (Fyi Biggin Hill was an RAF base), and the way we expanded, was rather than to find a new area, was to get a nearby RAF base, and rearrange a few things, with a new terminal. This is how we expanded, cheaply and effectively. We are expanding all these airports now, and think we should stick with what we have. Now Lydd Airport, my home airport which is a GA airport with a runway capable of holding short A320+737 flights, is being expanded, both runway and construction of a new terminal to get this small airport in the middle of nowhere a shot.

8

What about “London” Oxford? Only 60 miles away.

1 Like
9
  • London Oxford - Not in London, not a commercial airport. I don’t know much on this airport either.
1 Like
10

I was joking. The number of airports “London” has that you have to go out of your way to reach is ridiculous. I can’t say anything better about my city that has a single international airport at capacity, but still.

1 Like
11

These airports are actually a massive help. Both to budget airlines, businesses, and the general public.

I almost always go to Gatwicl (Not in London lol) when I fly somewhere. My sister took Stansted for Ryanair and git a cheap fight, and the same with my Dad taking a flight to Dublin and Edinburgh with the company he works for.

1 Like
12

We’ve got a new one and we have more runways at Mascot then Heathrow does. Western Sydney Airport is also coming with a fast train line, Melbourne on the other hand…

1 Like
13

A whole post without mentioning us crazy Texans? I’m impressed @Louis ;)

2 Likes
14

Be careful, I’ll probs make an entire post about crazy Texans next ;)

2 Likes
15

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.