London Banter - View Single Post

Recliner[_2_] · September 5th 14, 03:26 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On Fri, 05 Sep 2014 14:16:48 +0100, JNugent
wrote:

On 05/09/2014 09:21, d wrote:

On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 21:18:00 +0100
Neil Williams wrote:
On 2014-09-04 16:33:29 +0000, d said:

When if ever there are street protests and riots about people not being able
to book a last minute break to Ayia Napa for a hundred quid I might change
my mind. But somehow I don't see that happening.

People aren't taking those kinds of holiday from Heathrow. They're
going with the orange and blue teams from Luton, Stansted and Gatwick,
and all three have spare capacity already. So Heathrow expansion has
nothing to do with cheap holidays in the sun (or cheap anything).

That was in response to it being suggested that flying is a necessity.
It might be for the military and a few other assorted professions, but for
the average person in the street it is not and with video conferencing
now pretty good neither is it for business a lot of the time.
Anyway , plenty of flights to north america leave from heathrow no doubt with
a lot of tourists on board.

The obvious innocent retort would be to ask whereabouts in the USA Ayia
Napa is.

But you raise an interesting point.

I can travel to Europe by train or by car. NL is fairly cheap by car
(part of the cheapness being avoidance of the need to hire a car
locally), but Italy is expensive in time and in fuel, tolls, overnight
stay en-route, etc.

OTOH, how do I get to the USA or Canada (let's not even mention the
Antipodes) except by flying?

Or is it your thesis that because you don't accept that I need to go to
those places (on your own definition of "need"), nothing should be done
which might facilitate my getting there?

I think that people like Boltar, with a fear of flying, rationalise it
by asserting that flying is a bad idea for everyone. That way, they
don't feel they're losing out so much.