Comments by "Zhi Han Lee" (@lzh4950) on "London Heathrow Airport is expanding. Should it be?" video.

  1. I heard the mayor of London later blocked the runway project again though
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  2. Reminds me of the controversy of EU's Emissions Travel Scheme that carbon taxed flights based on their distance; as Asian airlines would be taxed the heaviest, given the greater distance of Asian countries from Europe
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  3. 7:45 Woodlands Train Checkpoint: Hold my sovereignty (~12km further than Changi Airport from downtown Singapore) The train station used to be on the edge of downtown but that meant having a stretch of Malaysian railway-operated track (built before Singapore split from Malaysia) cutting through Singapore, which the latter (as a city-state without a domestic main-line rail operator) felt undermined it's sovereignty. It's current location is beside one of the 2 countries' international border crossings, from where only 1 bus goes to the nearest metro station (1km away), but is often already full with people who begun their journey in Malaysia (as that is where that bus service originates)
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  4.  @diiriyetv  Reminds me of the 1st time I flew to Shanghai, I saw my aircraft get closer to the city on the in-flight moving map but then suddenly turn away, which is when I realised how far the airport is out in the city's outskirts
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  5. In the long term that looks like the closest the city could get to a "Boris Island" airport, with the advantage of it's runway being closer to the sea, minimising the land area that's affected by aircraft's noise pollution
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  6. I took the A380 before & remember it's still slightly quieter than the B777 though
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  7.  @bradlemmond  Maybe Heathrow & London City airports could be prioritised for short & medium-haul flights (to Europe, Middle E & the E coast of N America) as well as those serving non-transiting passengers, as these airports' greater proximity to central London would be more important for such flights. Alternatively rail services to continental European destinations be expanded to substitute some of the short-haul flights there. Then Gatwick could perhaps handle the longer-haul flights & those carrying mainly transiting passengers, while Stansted plus Luton could continue serving low-cost airlines plus passengers heading to Oxford & Cambridge (which I believe is why Emirates had added a daily flight to Stansted). In the longer term when more funding is more available I'm guessing an expansion of Southend airport will be the closest to the "Boris island" airport concept, as it's the closest to the coast, so more of it's flight paths are over water & won't disturb residents
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  8. Singapore's Changi Airport is adding a new terminal (#5) that the government has used to justify a yearly airport tax increase, all the way until 2024. It's supposed to keep it competitive with other airports e.g. HKG, DXB but with the shift from hub-to-hub to point-to-point air travel I'm thinking whether the terminal will face overcapacity (with 30% of the airport's traffic being transfer traffic). Also recently the city's Seletar Airport was expanded from a general aviation to a commercial airport, to which all turboprop flights were to be moved to (from Changi), but flights from there were delayed for 4.5 months as neighbouring Malaysia (just a few km north of the airport) opposed ILS installation for the airport runway's northern approach, claiming it would constrain M'sia's development by imposing 54m building height limits over the Pasir Gudang industrial estate. Singapore subsequently relented, but that meant that when Indonesian forest fire haze spread to Singapore in 2019, all the airport's flights had to be cancelled (& a little ironically all of them were operated by a Malaysian airline (FireFly))
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  9. Forgot to add that Singapore's Changi Airport is adding a 3rd runway too (& maybe a 4th in the future as well to be shared with the neighbouring Changi Air Base), located on reclaimed land. Thankfully winds here are mostly north-south (slightly NE-SW), & with all residential estates being west of the airport (which is surrounded by sea on the remaining 3 sides), aircraft noise is less of a concern. On a side note, the country's currently existing golf courses typically sit on cheap land too as they have low opportunity costs e.g. Tanah Merah Country Club is just south of the airport. Terminal 5's construction will continue to be delayed though (originally announced in 2013 to be complete in "the mid-2020s", then changed to the '2030s' (perhaps as this airport's demand is expected to slow due to the advent of point-to-point flights bypassing the airport, which being relatively further south than, say, HKG or DXB, means it's also on the way of fewer aeroplane routes worldwide); after the CoViD-19 pandemic began, I now hear that the terminal may only be completed closer to 2040. But it's not the 1st time this kind of situation has happened; I recall Terminal 3's construction (which eventually completed in Jan 2008) was also intentionally slowed as 9/11 regressed the aviation economy
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