We love Keith Taylor...

Many thanks for your e-mail about night flights at Kent International Airport and sincere apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I receive a large volume of correspondence on a daily basis and it sometimes takes longer than I would like to respond. Please be assured that this is an issue I am extremely concerned about for many of the reasons you raise in your e-mail and I shall be raising my concerns in the public consultation once it finally starts. I have also signed the 'No Night Flights' petition.

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Decision nears on runway waste plan

The Environment Agency will make a decision next month on plans to allow drainage of runway waste into Pegwell Bay.

The government body invited residents to view the application made by Infratil, the owners of Manston airport, at a meeting in Ramsgate last week.

Infratil wants to upgrade the existing surface water drainage pipeline. If approved, the airport will install an interceptor tank capable of removing runoff water from the taxiways, aprons and runway before discharging the waste into the sea.

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Biggin Hill. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

Biggin Hill Airport will now apply for long-term changes to its lease in the wake of its "Olympic gateway" bid. Critics accused airport bosses of trying to set a precedent for changes to the rules, including longer opening hours and introducing fare-paying passengers, after it submitted an application to relax regulations during the games.

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The Parkway Station fiasco develops

KCC are asking for £10m as a starter for the hundreds (?) of millions the station will eventually cost - as if they can't think of anything better to with that kind of money. Mind you, if the China Gateway saga is anything to go by, I would be completely unsurprised to find that some canny TDC councillors have had the foresight to buy some land (that would then need to be compulsorily purchased) slap-bang where the station is proposed. Stay tuned.

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New station 'would help airport lift off'

A proposed Thanet Parkway station would give a fantastic boost to Manston airport but the terminal would still grow without it, its boss has said. Charles Buchanan, chief executive of Kent International Airport, said rail links between Ramsgate and London were already much better, with high-speed journey times down to 75 minutes. A Parkway station close to the airport would cut this to around 64 minutes, although he would like to see it fall tobelow 60 minutes. But he insisted that the terminal would grow with or without the station.

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TDC and Infratil: "no contact"

Well, well. The Chairman of KIACC (the consultative group for Kent International Airport) has forwarded a number of very good questions from the general public to Richard Samuel at TDC. The gist of it, unsurprisingly, is: what on earth is going on? Have a look at the exchange and see how many of KIACC's questions TDC answered...

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Boris Johnson still bonkers

The highly educated buffoon who inexplicably beat several X-Factor contestants to get a responsible job running one of the greatest cities in the world is still making a public fool of himself. Unaware of where the boundaries of London might actually be, he seems to believe that his personal authority extends to wherever the placenames are written in English, which goes some way towards explaining why he thinks he can build an island in the shipping lanes of the Thames.

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TDC Airport Working Party

Marvellously convenient, and doubtless falling into an empty slot in your diary, the Airport Working Party will be re-convening their hastily cancelled meeting from last year. This will be happening on Thursday 20th January at 10:30am, in the Pugin & Rossetti Rooms, Cecil Street, Margate, Kent. Like I say - handy.

Special guest stars will be Bureau Veritas, the world famous sound consultants whose role in the unfolding drama appears to be that of the rain on Infratil's parade. BV's report, which had to be re-drafted a couple of times before being accepted by TDC, did not go down at all well with our chums on the tarmac at Kent's Irrational Airport. An embarrassing spotlight was focused on the typos in Infratil's proposal that skewed the story in their favour; the need to sound-proof Ramsgate was raised; and some crushing killer blows were landed

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Airport gets new radar system - to prevent mistakes

Manston Airport is to have a new multi-million pound radar system to ensure offshore wind turbines are not mistaken for aircraft. Thales, a global aerospace technology company, is to replace the existing radar and air traffic display system.

The new system is designed to present a clearer picture to air traffic controllers and boost reliability and safety. Rotating wind turbine blades can cause so-called radar clutter that resembles the picture from a moving aircraft. The situation is expected to worsen with the development of wind farms in the Thames Estuary off Thanet, including Thanet Offshore and London Array.

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Thales supplies surveillance radars to Kent airport

Thales has signed a contract with Manston, Kent’s International Airport for the programme management, supply and installation of co-mounted primary surveillance and monopulse mode-S secondary surveillance radars, complete with Eurocat-C1 air traffic control (ATC) system.

Manston currently operates with a legacy, raw video, primary surveillance radar (PSR) and procures a feed of monopulse secondary surveillance radar (MSSR) data - but due to the ongoing development of three large offshore windfarms in the Thames Estuary, the legacy PSR detects returns from the turbines that are displayed as significant areas of clutter.

Thales will deliver its STAR 20002 and co-mounted RSM 970 S3 mode-S MSSR radar equipment, which are solid-state radars that will feed data into the Thales Eurocat-C radar display system. These systems will enter into operation before the end of 2011.

TheEngineer.co.uk