London's Airports: Heathwick-the daftest idea yet.

Airnthere is very much up for new ideas and things which move the transport industry and business in general forward. We are seldom swift to condemn and only do so after much thought.

The latest UK Government idea to try to mitigate some of the effects of its David Cameron ordained pre election promise to cancel the third Heathrow runway project by building a £5bn high speed train link between it and Gatwick is in the 1st April catageory though. The response to it does not require more than a moment's thought, so condemnation comes easily.

Quite simply who would transit through a hub whose runways are 30+ miles apart and connected by a train trip when at Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki,the Gulf airports and others they can simply walk from gate to gate or at worst take a brief trip on a people mover/mini train?

That's before one even begins to contemplate the real logistics and costs. Unlike Hong Kong, the UK hasn't grasped the idea that the train has to be brought to the customers not the customers,-via a lengthy hike,-to the train. A Heathrow-Gatwick rail link would probably have to be either customs and immigration bonded, not to mention escape-proof. It would therefore be inaccessible to purely domestic passengers. Alternatively it could be landside and available to all. Its airline transfer users would then have to have to have visas (price £45 a head),and, via queues, go through arrivals controls at one airport and departure controls at the other. Either option would make the volumes of passengers so low that huge subsidies would be required for the train which would have to be free to users to even be considered. For many of the same reasons plus conflicting runway alignment, Northolt does't cut it either.

The other options of a Hong Kong, Osaka or Seoul type new airport built on "Boris" or any other Thames Estuary new or existing island also don't look likely flyers. This is UK, not Asia. The single minded dynamic focus on projects of national importance simply isn't British. Whatever is proposed will be fought by armies of environmentalists, planet savers, lovers of rare species of butterflies only to be found in Boris' left ear and countless others. The planning battle alone would take years.

At the time of the General Election in 2000, Heathrow's third runway was nearly ready to proceed. With Transport Minister, Philip Hammond now saying clearly "never", it now looks lost and will very soon become impractical or vastly more expensive unless the Conservatives are prepared to say those unimaginable words "Sorry, we got it wrong. We have to do it after all".

Trains might fly.

The whole saga is a man made national disaster for London and UK's role in air transport and for its long term position in worldwide business and tourism. It is extremely bad news for the struggling UK economy and employment. There will be many beneficiaries, but they won't be Britain or the British.