Rebirth of UK airports?

[DeeJay]

Hey!

 

Question about your UK sceneries, just for interest: When FTX England was released, I remember you've mentioned that it was the best selling product in comparison to a short time period ever (?). Then a few airfields came in Southern England, followed by Southampton. If I remember correctly, the airfields didn't sell well and thus no further small airfields were made for England. But Southampton should have been a very good seller. However, there have been years without any new airport development for UK by ORBX.

Now "suddenly", many years later, there have been several bigger airports there: East Midlands, Leeds, London City and now Alderney and Edinburgh coming soon. What's behind this "rebirth" of British airports? Have any circumstances changed? Or has it to do with the TE sceneries that are now possible? If the latter is the case, then why are you focussing an bigger airports? I thought smaller airfields should be the ones to complement the TE sceneries. At least for IFR flying, I switch TE off for a better perforemance.

 

Not that I had a problem with it - they look of course very nice! And UK2000, as much as I liked their perfoemance, are slowly really due for a more modern replacement.

 

BTW, is there a chance for some smaller fields in Scotland maybe? Or even Ireland??

 

 

One more question about UK airports: I've realized that at many of the UK airports there is one or more old runways that seem to be demolished and that are used as a taxiway or apron now. Then there is a new runway crossing the old one in a different angle. Why is that so special for UK airports? Has the average wind direction changed so much over the years? Did they realize they don't need so many crossing runways? Are there other reasons for that phenomenon that's really special for UK? Here are some examples: Inverness, Bournemouth, Southend, Birmingham, Norwich, Doncaster, Humberside, Prestwick, Belfast City, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and I remember even Heathrow had a third, smaller crossing runway that was clsosed and demolished in favour of terminals and hangars many years ago.

 

Regards, Dominik

[Nick Cooper]

48 minutes ago, DeeJay said:

I've realized that at many of the UK airports there is one or more old runways that seem to be demolished and that are used as a taxiway or apron now. 

 

Hello Dominik,

without doing any research either, I would guess that the wartime A configuration may have something to do with it.

You can read about them here

 

Between 1939 and 1945, there was a war in Europe and airfields were very quickly built to accommodate the airforce

needed to fight that war.

RAF Kirmington is a good example.

Today it is known as Humberside Airport.

 

You can yourself read about it here and see images of it here

 

 

 

 

[Roger Dodger]

Nick, as always you are a mine of useful, relevant and helpful information. We need to clone your brain - preferably to an SSD 

 

Best wishes,

Roger

[DeeJay]

Thanks a lot! Very interesting that you can see this history so much more there today than in other regions concerning the airports..

[Banananav]

Hi Dominik

When larger and jet aircraft came into RAF service, and the first jet airliners emerged, at the start of the Cold War the new NATO standard runway was 9000 ft. This was invariably achieved by extending the WW2 main, 6000 ft runway which was usually closest to the prevailing wind.  Waddington and Finningley are notable exceptions to the latter.  Scampton necessitated a diversion to the east of the A15,  I can’t think of any airfield where a new runway was built shifting the alignment of the main rw although we have many civilian airfields with extra runways.

Some airfields, mostly training airfields operating smaller aircraft eg Valley and Cranwell, kept one or even both the WW2 secondary runways.

I can think of only one fast jet Main Operating Base, Lossiemouth, which has a southerly main runway and kept its westerly short runway, extended to 6000 ft and we used it regularly with Buccaneers at full weight in stiff westerly winds.

The other exception is Coningsby with a south-westerly 9000 ft main. It also keeps a section of the “lazy” north-westerly 4000 ft runway active for just the BBMF Spitfires, Hurricanes and Chipmunks to use as they are very cross-wind limited.
Rgds

Chris