please empty your brain below

Sorry, but some of those photos you took look a bit grainy
/coat
surely "Isle get my coat"?
Reams of garbage on the news about the airport, and you have the nous to look at the story in an original way - brilliant post.
Nicely dressed up anti-Boris article; now tell me, does DG have any suggestions on aviation expansion?
For years I have been looking forward to you reporting on the Isle of Grain - I think ages ago you said you would do it one day.

Look forward to Allhallows on Sea. It is about 50km (30 miles) as the crow flies from Bow but unbelievable remote for somewhere so close and has a certain eerie desolation about it - the Wuthering Heights of Kent.

What we really want to know is how you got around. Those pictures taken from a slight elevation suggest a coach with remarkably clean windows.

Given the remoteness and lack of distance from London one can see why Boris thought putting an airport around here would be a good idea.
I'm not sold on the urgent need to increase capacity in the south east until I see Manston airport in Kent (which has a runway big enough to cope with the largest of planes) reopened and running as a commercial success.
Arguable whether a fortification dating from Victorian times can be described as a Martello Tower.

Hope you visited Cooling church?
Excellent stuff, how very topical, the team at dg really have come up trumps on this one, especially as Harry notes most of the coverage is the usual ill informed drivel.

'Nicely dressed up anti-Boris article' (Jordan D) I didn't read it this way, although I'm no Boris fan. The post doesn't come down one way or the other as far as airport proposals are concerned.

At least the mayor of London (did I mention I don't like him or most of his policies) has the guts to confront the issue (in a similar way to his predecessor did with the congestion charge) although moving flights away from London could surely only be popular.

PoP 'What we really want to know is how you got around.' I was wondering this too. Was a train to (say) Strood and a fair bit of walking involved, or a bus? Has dg finally taken to two wheels? Surely not.
@PoP & Lorenzo: There are local buses from the Medway Towns to Grain and Allhallows.
As Davies said on the radio this morning, there is no "right" answer, just shades of grey.

Apart from Boris, is there a political party that supports a new Thames estuary airport? It would certainly be quicker and cheaper to expand what we have already than build new.
@ PoP - there is an hourly 191 bus operated by Arriva that serves Grain and the villages. There's also a schools / peak time 196 bus. I was quite surprised it was that frequent for somewhere relatively remote.
Don't forget that a lot of Great Expectations also takes place in that area...
It will be interesting to see what happens with airport expansion. One of the arguments for a hub airport is so passengers can change flights at the same airport. Having to travel between say Gatwick and Heathrow is already a bit of a pain even if you are British. If you are coming from overseas the prospect of having to change planes as well as airports in a foreign country is probably quite daunting.

What is happening now is that because of the shortage of take off and landing slots at Heathrow, the fees make it far less economic to run smaller planes which go to regional airports. Gatwick now has the same policy, of making it more expensive for smaller planes to use the airport. This was I suspect the primary reason FlyBe pulled out of Gatwick. Pushing smaller planes to outer airports like Stansted or Luton makes connecting to a longer haul plane (which probably flies from Heathrow) much slower and much riskier, especially since there are no direct rail links. Hence the idea behind a hub airport.
Never thought any Estuarial Airport had much prospect, no matter who promoted it. No-one's mentioned Maplin (or the less-attractive name of Foulness) which was a similar idea for the Essex side in the 1970s when I worked for BOAC.

Every airline then was adamant they wouldn't move, because of their investments in existing airports. I've still got the BOAC 'management brief' setting out the expense (unrecompensed) of shifting xx miles east. Also not mentioned is the off-airport infrastructures, which take up about 50% of the airport land space again.

Transport links to any Estuarial airport site, either side of the Thames, will cost almost as much as the airport itself. And yet, expanding LHR (Heathrow) is not on, or not with a third runway which will destroy the immediate area and noise-blight even more London (and Surrey / Bucks) residents.

The answer lays in looking at air hubs objectively, not as it's been done now ('we know wot a hub is, and we want more of the same, guv'); we need decent rail links between airports (land-grab problems and non-compatibility of train and plane schedules for connecting between airports), rail vice air links for short-haul, and more northern direct flights (Manchester and Glasgow etc).

Also, the markets need to be split, so that charters / budget carriers / scheduled ['legacy'] carriers don't fight for slots. BUT - has anyone noticed that each of London's three airports has a different owner, each of those pumping in billions to fight the other two for attracting planes. This country abandoned aviation policy when airports were sold off, which makes a mockery of the Davies Commission - how do you MAKE a carrier serve any airport when every element is private and run for a financial return?
Why, when Northerners (and their elected representatives) constantly complain about lack of jobs, lack of housing, and the south-centredness of the UK, do they not want/are they not campaigning for the new airport capacity - that it is said is required - to be situated up north? Seems to me that would solve all the problems at once.

Whenever I am on flights from LGW or LHR there are always a significant proportion of people who have had to journey long distances (usually by road) from northern parts - please Powers That Be, apply some common sense to this problem and re-distribute flight-share by building the new hub airport somewhere outside the home counties. Economic growth will then surely follow!

One has only to look at planefinder.net to see how jammed-solid the skies over southern England already are.
Folks, we're straying from the point that the Isle of Grain is an absolute shit-hole.
@Chris - it's just like Heathrow, then?
@Bob: depends on your perspective donn'it

I'd consider Belgravia one of the worst places to live!
"The planes from Spain land nowhere near Grain"
"By George, I think he's got it!“
Interesting post. "Grain's brief beach" - you have a way with words, DG.

And a way of inspiring interest. I'll make time to have a look myself. Thanks.
You might find this blog interesting, as a few of the recent articles (but not the most recent, so scroll down) are about the Grain Tower.

http://thecoastalpath.net/
I think in the long term this would have been the best option for an Airport, especially as you could have designed it from scratch. All other solutions will have to make some sort of compromise that will effect the end result. But then I do believe that the Key to the success of a country is its infrastructure and the delay of HS2 is already a big mistake.
But who am I?
Max - I agree, with political will and an unlimited budget, this might be the best option. But it is not a perfect option; none of them are. The compromises here are that the estuary airport would be expensive (not just the airport, but also the related infrastructure), involve persuading the airlines to move to a new site, damage the economy around Heathrow, damage the wetland habitat, and would suffer more from fog and the potential for bird strikes (fewer of them, of course, once the wetlands disappear).

And then there are the unexploded WWII munitions on SS Richard Montgomery...










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