If you live in or near a large- or even medium-sized city in the U.S., chances are good you have a decent-sized airport near you. If you’re lucky, there may two airports that are a reasonable drive from home. Heck, if you live in the New York metropolitan area (population 23 million), you even have a choice of THREE nearby airports.
Meanwhile, if you look at the other side of the pond, London, England has SIX airports. How and why that happened is pretty interesting (click here to learn more about it). You’d think that six airports would be enough for a city with a population of about 9 million, right? Apparently not, because the country’s capital city has just been approved for airport #7.
Manston Airport, located on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, was a small, single-runway airport during its active years from the time of World War I until the year 2014. It was a Royal Air Force base during World War 2, but is now closed and being used as a space to park trucks.
The current owner of the property, RiverOak Strategic Partners (RSP), has been trying to get approval for the redevelopment of the airport, to once again be used as same, for the past 5 years. They just got approval.
Their goal is for the new airport to handle cargo, which will decrease the cargo load on the other 6 airports in the area. However, RSP director Tony Freudmann, told local outlet KentOnline that while it will primarily operate as a freight airport, talks are also underway with airlines (specifically KLM, Ryanair and EasyJet), regarding the possibility of also operating passenger flights.
“Looking at the way the passenger market is going, we are confident we can persuade one or more low-cost carriers to base their planes here,” said Freudmann.
RSP plans to invest up to £500 million ($588 million) into the airport, including ensuring it’s “net zero carbon from scratch.”
Surveys, planning and design work will be the next steps, followed by construction later next year. The first cargo planes are planned to take off in early 2025.
Feature Photo: Pixabay
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3 comments
Most of these airports are a long way out of London and only easily accessible to those living on that side of town. Living in West London, I really only have a choice of three airports and that applies to pretty well everyone wherever they live. Plus you must remember that nearly half the population of England live in the South East, so these airports serve them also.
What are the 6 London airports? Heathrow, London City, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, and Southend? NYC has more than 3. I count 6. JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Westchester County, Stewart/Newburgh, and Islip. Then there’s Teterboro, which is a busy airport for business jets. The NYC area used to have Republic on Long Island but that lost airline service in the 1990’s even though the airport is still there. I drove by just to see it once but was in a hurry that I didn’t stop and only saw it by the highway.
This airport is around 80 miles / 125 km away from London City. If you count this a “London airport”, you should also count all of SFO, OAK, SJC, STS, SFM, SCK, and MRY to San Francisco / Oakland / San Jose, so boom, we already have 7 airports…