Airport will take traffic off roads

Brian Cooper tells us he has heard that a consortium has bought the airport at Manston (letters, July 29).

Indeed, it is a British company but backed by Americans with years of experience of running airports. The big difference this time is that new owners RiverOak have actually bought the airport for £16m. Having invested so much, they clearly do not intend to let it be a failure.

Lack of investment by previous owners has been the principal cause of its lack of success. However, the former owner of Manston sold off most of the equipment installed there, so the new airport will have state of the art new equipment and will encourage less polluting modern airplanes. The other advantage they have given themselves at the beginning is that they will start with cargo planes, as it is cargo that Manston was particularly skilled with.

Indeed, they claimed they were the fastest airport in the country, in being able to clear an aircraft of cargo in just 30 minutes!

There is a particular shortage of cargo landing spots in the SE, with a lot of cargo from European countries reaching the northwest coast of France. It then has to be offloaded onto lorries which cross via the Channel Tunnel and then fill up our motorways with extra traffic.

After the cargo flights get going, our east Kent roads may be less cluttered with heavy lorries, and that will be a blessing.

Nicholas Reed

Press Officer, Why Not Manston?