Greenery

[CGI of the completed project (including runway and all terminal infrastructure) © Heathrow]

Not best pleased this morning to read in the FT that we are pressing ahead with a massive - and massively expensive - expansion of Heathrow. Which as someone who believes we need to wean ourselves of both growth and petrol, I do not much care for, despite the arty impression of the completed expansion above.

From which you would not guess that the plan of the airport started out as the star of David. Concerning which the snap above is lifted from reference 2.

I wonder if the boss of Heathrow, one Thomas Woldbye, a Dane who made his name running the airport at Copenhagen, has a secret clause in his contract which awards him a whopping bonus when the first spade hits the ground. Which, thinking with my fingers and of the stop-start nature of a lot of the development here at Epsom, might not be a firm enough peg on which to hang a lot of money. The lawyers would have a field day.

Plenty of him on the Internet, but seemingly not yet important enough to get his own page in Wikipedia. Maybe in the Danish edition? If there is one, that is.

References

Reference 1: Heathrow ‘ready to start mobilising’ as it unveils £49bn expansion plan: Project includes building third runway and rerouting Britain’s busiest motorway - Robert Wright, George Parker , Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: https://www.airporthistory.org/blue-concourse/heathrows-third-runway-plans-date-back-to-1946.