| Topic: | Cranes, towers and helicopters | |
| Posted by: | Anthony Waller | |
| Date/Time: | 16/01/13 19:55:00 |
| No doubt all of us are chilled by today's accident at Vauxhall. I was on the train today. But it proves that planning and resident objections raised over hi rise buildings and air traffic & flight paths that were dismissed as 'fantasy fiction' by planners and architects are valid and quite, quite real. All of us living here are not strangers to low helicopter movements and the regular visits at night by the police helicopter and the vital input of the air ambulance. The low height is obviously due to the LHR flight path approaches which converge over Kew, Brentford and Chiswick. And latterly over a wider path. Looking tonight at the few cranes I can see from home, they are barely lit. One with two faint red lights and the other with a slow intermittent red light. One crane was lit with LEDs over christmas and that was very visible, even pleasant to view. It is after all, a temporary structure. But the hi-rise buildings are not. One wonders of the wisdom in allowing such a tall building such as the one at GWQ so close to an approach to one of the planet's most busy airports but also beside a navigable location of the river and the A4/M4 Other cities moved their airports so skyscrapers are never in a flight zone but have not done so. Others do not build more than 6 storeys within 20km of an approach zone and this reduces every 5km It was a sheer miracle that the aircraft missed the bridge and the train from Hounslow by just some 20 metres. But it must be a warning to have a better strategy before something really big happens. The odds cannot be good. |