Birds cause emergency landings, aborted takeoffs

On 2009-02-02 16:07:54 +0000, Graeme Wall said:

In message
Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 20:47:24 on Sun, 1
Feb 2009, Graeme Wall remarked:
If I remember correctly, there were four sites being proposed in the
60s/70s for a new airport for London: Foulness/Maplin; Stansted;
Wing/Cublington and the fourth was, I think, Greenham Common near
Newbury. Can someone in this NG remind me? Was Greenham Common ever
proposed as a site or am I mixing it up with something else?

I'm sure there were just the first three. Greenham Common was where the
USA deployed their cruise missiles (which we don't hear very much about
any more) and was therefore a place of much protest (but not about 3rd
London airports).

For a time Greenham appears to have been the designated emergency
runway for Heathrow as it had the longest runway in the south of
England.

That's where the "mixing up" arises I expect.

I believe Newbury council were keen on the place being adopted as an airport
at one time, but there are apparently covenants on the land that prevent such
usage. The military airfield was sanctioned under wartime emergency powers
on the understanding that when the military ceased to use it it would revert
to common land.

Thank you one and all, I suspect it was the possibility of Greenham
Common's runway being used as an emergency runway for Heathrow which
had got the memory cells cross-linked (or something similar).

Incidentally, I can remember Strategic Air Command's B47s doing
circuits and bumps there in the 1950s. There were NOISY!
--
Robert