What's the thinking behind a new Thamesd Estuary airport when Stanstead is...

[sandyRoe]

...underused?

[rowanwitch]

To create enough outcry about the damage to wildlife that the extension of stanstead will seem a much more acceptable option.

[sandyRoe]

Machiavellian thinking, then, Rowanwitch.

[boxtops]

Sandy, you tell me. We already have a hugely underused fully working airport here in East Kent, at Manston - big enough to take the biggest jumbo jets, it's currently used for fog diversions, mercy missions and a few charter flights. Huge runway, Thanet Way only a couple of miles away which comes off the M2, railway station not that far away. It'd need infrastructure, but it's already there - we flew from there to Edinburgh just before Christmas. http://www.manstonairport.com/

[Baldric]

The nice thing about developing Manston would be that it's been an Airport since 1914 or thereabouts, so everyone living under the flightpath has moved in since the Airport has been there, so have no grounds for complaints about the noise as they chose to live near an Airport.

[rowanwitch]

Sounds a good option if there is scope to extend rail links and put a decent road to it

[Baldric]

They're well into doing the road links as we speak!!!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[brenda]

I think there will be shed loads of money in this project , but for whom I wonder.

[beegeebee]

When anyone speaks of shed loads of money my first thought is, Lawyers followed by bankers, followed by builders and estate agents and as always politicians, because they seem able to smell money! B.