TheLocalYokel
Honorary Member Of Forums4airports
- Jan 14, 2009
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- #81
You're right. There are many what might have beens in life.I'm sure that it has been discussed many times before but it would be interesting to see what it would now look like had a different path been chosen.
I guess it's not healthy to dwell on what could have been.
Filton though ticks most of the boxes, or did. It's near the M4/M5 interchange; it'e very close to the main Bristol-South Wales railway line; a branch line from Filton to Avonmouth runs through the site, currently freight-only but earmarked to be part of the future Metro West; it's/was a much bigger site than Lulsgate with better weather; a longer runway than Lulsgate (600 metres longer); lower elevation.
Against that it's cheek by jowl with thousands of houses and some sort of accommodation would have been needed to integrate a busy works aerodrome (which it was once) into an airport. In the mid 1990s BAE, the owners, tried to set up a city airport at Filton but after a public enquiry the relevant government minister (Selwyn Gummer from memory) rejected the application. Unsurprisingly, the owners of Lulsgate were amongst the objectors to the idea.