Last week, I attended a discussion organised by CIMTIG regarding the future of Heathrow Airport, and the aviation industry in general. Sadly, because of limited time, and the attempt to discuss the whole industry, rather than just Heathrow’s third runway, they didn’t explore as many of the issues as I would like them to have done – but it was still a very informative evening.
This week is the Conservative party conference, and we expect some further discussion from the government-in-waiting about why they believe there are better ways of handling demand than building another runway.
I’d like to put Heathrow’s third runway into a ‘virtual Dragon’s Den’ and see how it gets along. Prior to last week, I’d say I was probably against the plans, but the presentation from the BAA director responsible for the third runway gave a very strong case, so I’m firmily back on the fence. Let’s see if the proposal can survive in the den. So here we have it – billions sitting on the table, rather than the usual £250,000, and I think we need a majority of the ‘Dragons’ to ‘invest’, rather than just the usual one or two.
Introducing the dragons.
In other parlance, they might be known as ‘stakeholders’ or ‘investment solutions partners’, but as I hate both of those terms, I’ll definetely stick with Dragons!
- Airport neighbours
- Passengers
- The Economy
- The Environment
- Airlines
The article will follow later in the week. What do you think? Would you ‘invest’?