PIGS MIGHT FLY

 If, as is claimed, a busy international airport is critical to the economic well- being of Wales then the purchase of the failing enterprise at Rhoose by the Welsh Government is probably not the certain solution. Sponsoring the construction of a better new airport elsewhere might be the better use of scarce public resources. The proposal for a Severnside airport was last revived in the UK air transport review some years ago when, coincidentally, much of Llanwern steelworks was closing down. The proposal then was for the Llanwern site to be the terminal having direct link to an intercity railway line and the M4 motorway, the runways to be constructed offshore on the sandbank between Newport and Bristol. Such an airport would operate 24/7 having a capacity for off peak freight as landings and departures would be over water. It would clearly replace both Cardiff and Bristol both of which have locational disadvantages.  ( Had Bristol airport been located at Filton there would have been no contest). The construction of such an airport would have underpinned the case for electrification of the railway from Paddington and possibly competed with Gatwick and Stanstead in terms of accessibility from West London. The proposal was supported by an international construction firm and the indicative design proposal prepared by the architects of Hong Kong International Airport, built on the island of Chek Lap Kok by land reclamation.

The proposal was not supported by the Welsh Government at the time, probably for reasons of realpolitik or, perhaps more accurately, political arithmetic. The governing party in Wales can never have a significant majority under the present system. Environmental opposition would probably exceed that surrounding the Cardiff Bay Barrage and that facing the proposals for a Severn Barrage (an even less probable proposition than such an airport).Whoever supported the building of an airport at Severnside would lose Gwent, Newport East and the election.  That is why the alternative to purchasing Cardiff  ‘Wales’ airport, which has consistently failed because it is in the wrong place, will not be fully tested. The 'economic' argument for such an 'investment' will not be fully tested against the environmental counter argument. The probability is that those of us who pay tax in Wales will then be committed to bailing out the Spanish owners and buying the proverbial pig in a poke that is Cardiff 'Wales' Airport..