The airport giveth, the airport taketh away

It must be very disappointing for people who have bought homes next to Bristol Airport to find there is an airport next to them. Who would have thought that would be possible? You spend a million or two on a lovely house miles away from the hurly burly of Big City life only to suddenly discover planes taking off and landing from an airport that, by some oversight, you managed to overlook. It’s a mistake anyone could make but only if they had their brains removed before getting the surveyor in.

Under the headline Bristol Airport expansion decision to go to High Court, we learn from the BBC that an organisation called BANN (Bristol Airport Is Big Enough – shouldn’t it actually be BAIBE or BABE?) is going to the High Court to appeal the decision of the Planning Inspectorate to permit expansion to the airport, adding some two million additional passengers to use it every year.

I understand some of the arguments against expansion. There will be more cars, more noise from quieter airplanes and more air pollution. Just like inside a big city really. I’m of the view that these effects could be mitigated by better public transport, even quieter planes and eventually less polluting planes, if we really want to do it. But I am going to say something very controversial here. I want Bristol Airport to be expanded. Not into a new Heathrow or Gatwick, but somewhere that gives me greater choice as to where I can go, like seeing my family in Canada, for example. I am not sure how cleaner it is to drive to Heathrow and then fly from there. A bigger Bristol could allow me to fly there on a quiet, cleaner more modern plane.

I’m sure none of the BABE – sorry, BANN – campaigners, nor any of their family and friends ever use the airport, so allow me to help them. Bristol Airport is too small and needs to be bigger. On an average morning, it is the uncomfortable equivalent of being in a tin of sardines, as crowds of people stumble like penguins along the inadequate passages to departure gates. I like the airport but it wouldn’t take much much to make it a far better experience?

Not a million miles from the airport likes Yatton where there is a main railway line. Why not lay a track from there to the airport? I’m sure there would be some planning issues, but a rapid transit system would surely reduce traffic problems at a stroke. Similarly, some minor road improvements could easily negate the effects of existing heavy traffic, never mind future issues. Look, in short, I am not sure BABE is representative of all of Bristol.

Not that Bristol Airport is in Bristol: it’s in North Somerset, but that’s not the point. No one ever asked me whether I wanted a better airport, with better facilities, improved transport links and a greater choice of destinations, but I do. So, I reckon, do countless others who are sick to the back teeth of the grind of going to London, Manchester or Birmingham when they would prefer to use their local airport.

And if the good folk who live near the airport want to do a house swap with me in my former council house in South Gloucestershire which is nowhere near a flight path, they only have to ask.