Member Article

Billion pound Heathrow runway proposals submitted

Heathrow Airport has submitted three runway options to solve the lack of hub capacity in the UK to the Airports Commission.

The three runway options, to the north, north west or south west of the airport, cost between £14-18bn and are designed to deliver extra capacity by 2025-9.

Colin Matthews, Heathrow’s chief executive, said, “After half a century of vigorous debate but little action, it is clear the UK desperately needs a single hub airport with the capacity to provide the links to emerging economies which can boost UK jobs, GDP and trade.

“It is clear that the best solution for taxpayers, passengers and business is to build on the strength we already have at Heathrow. Today we are showing how that vision can be achieved whilst keeping the impact on local residents to an absolute minimum.”

With a north west or south west runway, Heathrow say passenger capacity could increase from 80 million to 130 million and the maximum number of flights would rise from 480,000 to around 720,000.

Katja Hall, CBI chief policy director, said: “We cannot bury our heads in the sand. Aviation capacity in the South East could run out as early as 2025 and we’re still failing to use our regional airport network to the full.

“Every day we delay these critical decisions, we risk falling further behind our competitors. Whatever solution is found has to help UK businesses expand into emerging markets. Firms in high-growth economies are not waiting for us to make a call, before taking their business to countries with much better connections.

“Business is starting to wonder how serious the parties are about Davies. Politicians have consistently failed to agree a way forward and have been forced to outsource the decision to the Commission.

“We want a cross-party commitment now to accept its final recommendations in 2015 to stop us going back to square one yet again.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .