21 August 2018
Great news for Manston Airport in Kent! The Planning Inspectorate has accepted the application for the upgrade and reopening Manston Airport for examination.
The Development Consent Order (DCO) for the proposed project was submitted in July 2018 by RiverOak Strategic Partners (RSP) which plans to operate an air freight business on the airport, with some passenger services as qell.
Sarah Richards, Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate said, “After careful consideration we have decided on behalf of the Secretary of State that the application submitted by RiverOak Strategic Partners Ltd met the required tests set out in the legislation to be accepted for examination.
“The applicant must now decide and publicise when members of the public can play a part in the examination process by registering with the Planning Inspectorate as an interested party to give their views.”
RiverOak’s plan for Manston Airport as an air freight hub, with some passenger services.
One of the local MPs, Sir Roger Gale, welcomed the decision.
“This means that Manston has been accepted as a site of nationally important infrastructure,” he said.
“We are desperately short of runway capacity in the south-east and Manston offers a literally unique opportunity to provide freight and passenger capacity.
“I would like to pay tribute to RiverOak Strategic Partnership, the new administration of Thanet Council and those overwhelming numbers of local people who have, in the teeth of ridicule and vilification, held to the long-term vision for Manston Airport and recognised the national rather than the short-term commercial interest in using this essential national asset for its proper purpose.
“We have a long way to go: the pubic examination will, rightly, be rigorous and significant investment will be required to restore and expand the airport to meet the national demand and to make the airfield commercially viable but we are on our way. Now the real work begins.”
38 comments
Will it include GA aircraft? Doesn’t seem to cater for flying club or pilot training.
Tony Bishop, it will support General Aviation (including a flying school, light aircraft and executive jets), and MRO and tear – down operations, support for our local aviation museums, a cargo hub and passenger services.
I live in Dundee. It has a small airport with limited commercial flights. There was a welcome flight by Flybe between the city and Amsterdam, reasonably priced flying daily in and out. The flight was pulled after a year due to the flying club flights, which are many, made the airspace unsafe for take off and landing. I think best move training centre.
Very glad to see Manston will be a destination again. Just have to hope that Dundee can make a connection there.
FBO, is a general aviation facility. On the map it’s sited where the the old TGA facility was so it looks like GA will be catered for.
Over the moon glad to see it back good luck to you all.
Very glad to start to use Manston airport soon, would be really convenient for many passengers.thank you to a right decision.
I am stunned that Thanet residents continue to be so misinformed ! That is testament to the underhand way this whole process has been conducted to date. Don’t you know the intention is for a Freight hub,? It won’t be the quaint old passenger airline that you knew but instead you are giving the thumbs up to huge antiquated noisy cargo plane thundering over the heritage town if Ramsgate DAY and NIGHT….
This Thanet resident knows exactly what the reopening of Manston Airport will mean, and we welcome it. I was a passenger on many flights from Manston & any flights, are welcome with the jobs that will come with it.
Misinformed, ‘No’! Your vision of an “antiquated noisy” cargo plane is the misinformation. With the tightening up on decibel pollution worldwide, most if not all freight operators are having new planes custom built for freight NOT converting old DC8’s or 707’s. That’s history. Modern fanjets are extremely quiet and emit a whine/hiss rather than the roar and crackle of old jet engines. You’ve nothing to fear.
Olga, I hope you have read Sally’s previous reply to your comment, but I’m just reinforcing it in case you haven’t. At the consultation Tony Freudman told me to my face that it is freight they are interested in, not passengers. They want 24/7 flying, every few minutes – if it was just a few passenger flights a day, many of the objectors to the proposal would drop out, myself included. Freight planes are usually older, noisier and dirtier than passenger aircraft. Constant lorries transporting freight out of Thanet will also provide noise and dirt and cause our roads to deteriorate into the bargain. I’m sure you don’t want our beautiful environment destroyed.
Great comment! Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, we don’t need more noise and pollution here.
And what do you think thousands of houses will bring?
The roads in Thanet are already wrecked due to lack of money for repair. The weeds everywhere in road gutters and growing out of walls beside the harbour. Ramsgate is looking more and more like a ‘one-horse town’ . There’s been a massive increase in the car ‘population’ since 1998 when I first came here yet no real improvement to the road system. The re-opening of the airport will act as a catalyst for inward investment much as the Turner Centre has done for Margate. More money for all the aforementioned shortcomings.
Freighter aircraft are certainly not as you remember before. EU regulations have banned all but the quietest and efficient aircraft operating into European skys and airports. I doubt very much if they will attract the big companies out of Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted. 24/7 maybe but planes flying over every couple of minutes? It will never happen! Commercial dreams or pie in the sky if you like. As for the roads. I have no idea where you live in Thanet but unless you live between the airport and Minster you won’t even see a truck associated with the operation. Miss informed or making it up as you go along i think.
What do you think thousands of houses being built here with no local permanent jobs on offer will do. Bring on the airport
As a pilot of 40 years experience I can assure Sally of two things.
Firstly they will not be antiquated cargo aircraft, they will be freight versions of the aircraft thousands of people fly in every day, in every way maintained and equipped to same standards.
In addition, as the majority of flights will be on final approach over Ramsgate they will be on low power setting and will create little noise.
I look forward to seeing them soon.
Great news, just what I had hoped for. Another small step on the journey. I was born & bred in Thanet, now retired living in Scotland. I would love to fly down occasionally, I have done so in the past.
You idiot. It is not opening for passengers, but for freight.
To compliment the airport concentration needs to aimed at the port of Ramsgate. Especially with Brexit and potentially backlog of heavy goods vehicles at Dover. Spread the load.
Air Freight, Passengers. No sign of GA facilities. My guess is that this will be yet another commercial airport in the South East that will need large areas of controlled airspace, for ‘safety’, of course, and will block off yet more places from recreational flying and create more bottlenecks for GA pilots. With Southend and Farnborough’s airspace grabs and the new runway at Heathrow which will obviously change controlled airspace around that area at some point in the future, we are going to have fewer and fewer places to go and it’ll be more and more difficult to get there.
You are getting well ahead of yourself here. If you look on the plan you will see an FBO facility where TG Aviation used to be. What bottlenecks are you batting on about for GA??? There would never be a bottleneck around that airport. No GA fly east of there. There is only sea for 40nm until you reach Belgium. Every one flies DET- DVR and the 11nm cross to France. I suspect you have never flown in Kent and are just jumping on a percieved anti GA movement that doesn’t really exsist except in the small minds of some recreational pilots!
Keep up the fight we will win
They haven’t really got the money to CPO the airport let alone develope it. Have a look at RSPs financial statement to PINS they hope to raise the development money if they get a DCO awarded.
Let’s just get the airport up and running!
Firstly, really glad to see this airport opening again. We need all the airports we can. Especially in the south east where capacity is at breaking point and GA airports are closing.
Sounds like GA will be supported? What are the plans for the airspace around the Airport? Presumably this will have to be changed to a class D or C? Wondering how this will affect nearby airports like Rochester and Lydd.
Loving the troll comments. 24 hours with flights every few minutes :-D, I dont think so somehow. 2 or 3 an hour would be a major accomplishment.