JANICE Price voices an opinion on Southend Airport’s expansion that will have its supporters, but her voice is not shared by all.
She mentions the town’s failure to flourish because of a parochial mentality. Well, this mentality had no influence over industry that had previously flourished in the area, but has sadly gone because it failed to compete in the world at large.
There is little to attract business to Southend as there are so many empty shops, industrial units looking for tenants and unsold buildings and development sites.
Expanding the airport will do nothing for these, or, in fact, tourism.
Her reference to the dark ages is in some ways rather apt as repression has often been followed by revolt.
Southend Council, through its repressive behaviour, now has a revolt on hits hands, or at least concerned residents are showing democracy has not yet died.
G E HARVEY
North Crescent, Prittlewell
Tags: George Harvey
You are right of course, the airport does nothing and will never do anything to enhance Southend although with the new hotel planned there are better prospects for employment. However, the Stop Airport Expansion pressure group really must stop making statements which are untrue because it does their cause no favours. The decision to expand was NOT made unlawfully and the very large passenger planes shown in the leaflet will NOT be regular users of the airport. <> That’s nonsense!! and the access roads haven’t even been built yet. Artistic license maybe, but I wish they’d stick to the facts.
I would like to take this opportunity to correct you – all the statements made in the current SAEN leaflet are true to the best of our knowledge:
* The legal experts we have consulted believe the decision to grant planning permission was made unlawfully. If the Judicial Review is given permission to proceed, its outcome will determine whether that assessment was correct.
* The “very large” passenger plane depicted in the leaflet is an Airbus A319 – exactly the plane that Stobart indicates would be used regularly for passenger flights on the lengthened runway. While it has clearly been digitally added to the photo, every care was taken to ensure that it was to scale and at the correct height for a 3.5 degree descent to the runway threshold. In fact, after publication, we realised that we used the *current* runway threshold and not that of the extended runway, meaning that the plane would be significantly lower at that point. Clearly, on a standard descent, however, the plane would not be directly above that building, but over Nestuda Way a little way to the north.
It should also be noted that the 3.5 degree descent assumes the use of a computerised Instrument Landing System, which would need permission from the CAA to be used. This means that the plane is depicted as being higher than it would be on the current 3 degree glideslope used under manual control.
Shame you had to increase the size of the A319 on the leaflet to mislead people.
Or was it just another genuine mistake?
I knew people would complain about the aeroplane. That’s why I meticulously measured the dimensions of the hotel on Google Earth and ensured that the size of the plane was exactly right relative to the frontage. It’s even at the correct angle of descent and altitude for that distance from the extended runway end. It wouldn’t be approaching on that precise heading as the hotel is somewhat to the south of the runway approach vector, but that is the only detail that is changed.