It currently serves as many passengers each year as the vastly larger Washington Dulles airport. It's quite the anomaly due to being in the capital. Despite many security and noise concerns, it all the Congress-folk love using it to get home, so it enjoys a great deal of political protection.
I don't think there's any hope of building new airports anywhere near city centers now. Some that already exist may hang on, but the security and noise concerns would easily NIMBY any new construction, not to mention the absurd expense of buying the land.
London city airport is a tiny airport, it would be terrible if this was a decent size.
It's bad enough having Heathrow where it is, with all the planes over London.
One good thing about the "Boris" island idea was that planes wouldn't have had to fly over London itself, which would have probably helped noise and pollution.
* more days when it would be fog bound
* interfere's with existing flight paths for AMS and BRU
* wrong side of London for most people
* ship full of high explosive not too far away
* higher likelihood of bird strikes as it's in the middle of area that's key for migratory birds
If Heathrow was to move somewhere along the M40 corridor is probably the best bet (and attach it to HS2)
Is there any reason Heathrow couldn't be moved out to the suburbs where expansion could take place to allow London to continue to be a worldwide travel hub, but then use high speed rail to connect with London proper?
Not sure what you're saying. Heathrow is sorta in the suburbs already--about an hour tube ride--but you can get from Heathrow to Paddington in about 15 minutes by Heathrow Express (which may or may not be a good value) with another rail project underway. Certainly Heathrow isn't going to be picked up and moved.
London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.