madmanxpilot Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 6 minutes ago, lfc84 said: The weather app on my phone has the location and altitude of the weather station. It's 52ft. What's the expert opionion on here? Lengthen Ronaldsway airport runway or start new at Jurby ? The lowest point I can see on the airfield chart is the threshold to runway 03, that is 24 feet amsl. I got my 35 feet by using what I remembered the threshold elevation for the 26 threshold was. It’s actually 33 feet, but we rounded up to the nearest 5 when setting a decision altitude. By comparison, many coastal airports around the world are much lower - JFK and SFO are both about 14 feet amsl, and that’s now. Ronaldsway would still be 50% higher than those places at the end of the century if the forecasts are anywhere near accurate. Regarding which is the best option, upgrade Ronaldsway or start new at Jurby, then unless the government has a spare billion pounds lying around then Jurby is a non starter. I cannot see a project of that magnitude costing anything less than that sort of money. On the other hand, I think you could bring Ronaldsway up to scratch for something like 100 million. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmanxpilot Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 (edited) 22 minutes ago, Gladys said: What has everyone seen that indicates that this is anything other than a contingency to keep the area reserved should the need arise in the future? No doubt the meeting on 12 August will shed (a little) more light on it. The content of the Airport master plan apparently. It suggests consideration should be given to making Jurby our main airport. And yes, Aug 12th should be enlightening! Edited July 30 by madmanxpilot 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hairy Poppins Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 18 minutes ago, Gladys said: What has everyone seen that indicates that this is anything other than a contingency to keep the area reserved should the need arise in the future? No doubt the meeting on 12 August will shed (a little) more light on it. There's nothing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lfc84 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 27 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said: By comparison, many coastal airports around the world are much lower - JFK and SFO are both about 14 feet amsl, and that’s now. Ronaldsway would still be 50% higher than those places at the end of the century if the forecasts are anywhere near accurate. Lanzarote and Fuerteventura probably can be added to the brief list Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cambon Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 52 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said: The content of the Airport master plan apparently. It suggests consideration should be given to making Jurby our main airport. And yes, Aug 12th should be enlightening! With due respect, if the sea does rise by 35 feet ( it wont), in the next couple of hundred years, will we need runways and airports anyway? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utah 01 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 5 hours ago, 2112 said: Head of Conservation at Manx Wildlife Trust, David Bellamy, voiced his concerns about the protection of nature in the area Bollocks - airfields are some of the best places for wild life: minimum grass length 8", fenced in therefore protected. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Mexico Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 2 hours ago, madmanxpilot said: Ronaldsway is currently 35 feet above mean sea level, Jurby is about 80 iirc. A quick skeet through a number of scientific looking pages on the interweb suggests that sea levels are expected to rise between 1 and 3 feet by 2100. As it has been previously mentioned that this project is being considered to protect against the effects of climate change amongst other things, I can only think that they mean rising sea levels in mentioning that. I call BS. My personal opinion is that unless there is some reason that is not being mentioned for this project to be on the cards (MoD?) then this would be the vanity project of all vanity projects. You could extend the runways at Ronaldsway, put in Cat 2&3 approaches, and do all the other things that are needed to bring the place to the required standard for a tiny fraction of the price (10%?) that this Jurby project would cost the GMP. Of course, if someone else was picking up the tab and we were getting a brand new facility for free, a different opinion would be held! I'd forgotten how the aviation industry uses a mixture of metric, imperial and who-knows-where-that-came-from. Why we allow them to be in charge of large pieces of machinery is a mystery. I got my heights from this website but it's not what the height is above - you really need high tide for judging flooding for obvious reasons unless you're going to go all Barra. On examination the actual Ronaldsway runways average a bit more than 6m. The important point is the one you make about sea-level rise. It's comparatively slow under most predictions - the real problem is that it's unstoppable and even is global warming is halted can continue. So it makes no sense in the short of medium term to move the Airport - and in the long term Jurby has problem as well. I suspect this is another scam to use money from the Climate Change Fund to spend on capital projects that do nothing to improve the Island's resilience against climate change but, like most capital spending, subsidise the profits of the right construction industry companies and other consultants. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utah 01 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 58 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said: The content of the Airport master plan apparently Now tell me Mr Bond, where is this MASTER PLAN that is clearly 'TOP SECRET - PARISH COUNCIL EYES ONLY' in this Manx land of governmental transparency? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utah 01 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 1 minute ago, Roger Mexico said: It's comparatively slow under most predictions Comparatively? Come back in a century and you still wouldn't notice the difference. 'Sea level change' is a a paltry and unfounded excuse to justify contingency for a non-event but hey, it's trendy so best lay that down amongst the other smoke screens. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idleweiss Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 1 hour ago, madmanxpilot said: The content of the Airport master plan apparently. It suggests consideration should be given to making Jurby our main airport. And yes, Aug 12th should be enlightening! But what does an airport cost these days to build from scratch? £100M? £150M? There can’t seriously be any business case for replacing Ronaldsway at any time in the next 30 years? I believe we only ended up with Ronaldsway as the UK war office spent £1M developing it as a strategic asset and flogged it back to us for about £200K after WW2 as they no longer needed it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hampsterkahn Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 An alternative plan: Return the airfield to farm land. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utah 01 Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 1 hour ago, madmanxpilot said: unless the government has a spare billion pounds lying around then Jurby is a non starter. A billion, perhaps a bit much, but certainly several hundred million and don't forget to add in the cost of that 4-lane dual carriageway from Douglas 😉 Expand Ronaldsway? The weather factor will not change. A meaningful runway extension, to match the potential at Jurby ie circa 7500' is going to cost north of £150 and even more if it's going to include sea-bed work to install extended runway lighting. Of course, fog affects both runway ends so I don't think Cat 2 on 08 is feasible unless half of Casteltown was flattened - now that would give the Facebookers something to shout about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idleweiss Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 Just now, Utah 01 said: Expand Ronaldsway? The weather factor will not change. Whatever we build it will still have the same limited number of flights in and out a day over the next 30 or 40 years due to population size and demand. There is no way any investment would be viable. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cambon Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 11 minutes ago, hampsterkahn said: An alternative plan: Return the airfield to farm land. And put the windmills there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmanxpilot Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cambon said: With due respect, if the sea does rise by 35 feet ( it wont), in the next couple of hundred years, will we need runways and airports anyway? True 😂. ICAO and others when considering which airfields are likely to be affected by flooding induced by climate change consider it to be an issue for low lying airfields. Their definition of a low lying airfield is one which is within 10 metres of mean sea level AND within 10 km of the coast. The flooding risk arises from both rising seas, and these combining with storm surges driven by extreme weather events such as typhoons and hurricanes (tropical depressions). The main runway is, funnily enough, exactly 10m above sea level, with the terminals and hangars being higher, so this means it is at the very extreme limit of what is considered to be at risk. Combine that with the fact that we do not have tropical depressions affecting us, surely the risk is so low as to be effectively zero. There are plenty of good reference documents on the subject available on the web from official sources if anyone has an urge to read further. I found this paper useful - it mirrors a lot of what the ICAO and other organisations are saying. Sea level rise - affect on airfields. Edited July 30 by madmanxpilot 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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