Airport reopening not welcome by all

REGARDING the article (WMN, 3 June) about the plans for reopening Plymouth Airport.

One has to assume Mr Andrew Byford has consulted all the residents who live in close proximity to the airport about his plans to open it for use 24/7.

That they will have light aircraft from a flight school buzzing round all weekend whilst they sit in their gardens.

That it’s not easy to sell a house with an operational airport on your doorstep.

Also insurance companies in general do not like an airport in the middle of a well populated area.

I think Mr Byford can forget the Air Ambulance using the airport; seconds count on that job and the time taken to transfer a patient to an ambulance could be vital.

For your information Mr Byford, there is a converted Cessna already flying in America battery powered and it is capable of carrying four passengers for 100 miles on a single charge. But not if there is a headwind, or turbulence, or bad weather.

Give it another 30 years of development by the industry leaders and then perhaps, maybe.

Capt B E Roberts Commercial Pilot (re’td)

Tiverton alone, without taking into account Covid-19 which is predicted by various organisations and models to reduce UK GDP by between 6.5 and 12.8% over this year, with the more recent forecasts showing the economy not returning to 2019 levels for another two years or so.

Most forecasts can’t see a return to anything like the pre-Covid-19 GDP trajectory in the foreseeable future.

The combined effects of Covid-19 and Brexit are complex and vary between sectors of the economy depending both on what kind of Brexit deal, if any, we end up with. But whatever the shape of the post-Covid recovery, the report says that “ending the transition period on December 31st 2020 is likely to suppress growth further”.

Most of us have now accepted that Brexit is done and we cannot stop it. But surely you don’t need to have been a ‘Remainer’ to realise that there just isn’t time to deal with both the effects of Covid-19 and Brexit by the end of this year without crashing out either with a very bad deal or with none at all - an outcome almost universally predicted to be somewhere between highly undesirable and disastrous economically.

So come on government, it’s time to bite the bullet, face up to reality and accept the EU’s offer of a delay to Brexit, at least until we have sorted out the financial consequences of Covid-19.

Dr Francis Kirkham Nymet Rowland, Mid Devon