Heathrow expansion: how will the Government tackle the deadlock?

The great airport decision: our Travel Correspondent sets the odds

London’s last full-length runway opened 70 years ago (PA)

To give the great airport debate its proper perspective: when studies began in earnest about how and where to expand capacity in the London area, England were holders of the World Cup.

The Roskill Commission, set up in 1968 to recommend the best location for a new hub, saw its honest toil studiously ignored by successive governments. That pattern has endured ever since.

Yet while the national football team has repeatedly failed to reclaim the glory of the late 1960s, London has steadily grown to become the undisputed world capital of aviation.

This year more than 150 million people will fly to and from the six airports that serve the capital: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City and plucky Southend. New York is in a distant second place, with around 125 million passengers annually.

That remarkable success has been achieved by extracting each day an implausible amount of capacity from the world’s busiest runways: one at Gatwick, two at Heathrow. While other major aviation hubs have been expanding feverishly, London’s last full-length runway opened 70 years ago.

At the time the Government announces its decision, dozens of aircraft will be queuing on the ground and in the air to take off and land at Heathrow and Gatwick. At the UK’s two main airports, air-traffic controllers daily squeeze a quart into a pint pot. But while the pair are the most productive aeronautical assets on earth, from the passenger’s perspective the capacity crunch costs time and money.

Travellers are wearily accustomed to the quotidian delays, which occasionally degenerate into aeronautical gridlock when a hole appears in the runway at Gatwick or an Airbus makes an emergency landing at Heathrow with smoke pouring from an engine. And passengers pay far more for the privilege of flying from Heathrow than they do from other European airports. An airline market that delivers such outstanding value for passengers elsewhere is distorted at Heathrow because of the value of landing and take-off slots.

The bidding war means big planes flying long distances supplant smaller aircraft on domestic hops. The London runway debate may seem distant from Derry or Dundee, but future links from these cities to the capital and beyond depend on what the Government decides. The biggest challenge in global aviation is an intensely local issue: for regional airports wanting to be better connected, but more particularly for the residents beneath the flight path, presents and future.

My guide to the odds of what the Government will decide begins with the option that every transport secretary insists is not an option …

Doing nothing

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While previous administrations have prevaricated on runways, David Cameron took the art of can-kicking to a whole new level. As Prime Minister, he hefted the issue down the road and deep into the long grass. He invited Sir Howard Davies to spend three years of hard labour investigating the best location for extra capacity, but instructed the Davies Commission not to report until after the 2015 election. The new Government then demanded more research, which took the decision neatly past the London mayoral election, and deferred a ruling still further because of the EU referendum.

Doing nothing may yet turn out to be the only deliverable option, but it is unlikely to be the Government’s stated intention.

Heathrow: a third runway

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The “official” scheme, for a new runway to the north-west of the existing airfield, is the clear favourite, unequivocally recommended by the Davies Commission for the economic benefits it would bring to the UK. “Expansion would allow more frequent flights and new routes to emerging markets in Asia,” says Heathrow – though unhelpfully British Airways has quietly dropped its route to the western Chinese powerhouse of Chengdu, just ahead of the decision. Critics, ranging from a vocal environmental lobby to the boss of British Airways’ parent company, IAG, say it is undeliverable.

“Heathrow Hub”

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The dark horse is a concept sketched out on the back of a boarding pass by Jock Lowe, a former Concorde captain. It extends the existing northern runway westwards, allowing landings at one end while aircraft are taking off at the other end. The Davies Commission, which plucked the notion from obscurity to rank it among the shortlist of three, was confident that safety would not be compromised. Captain Lowe insists that Sir Howard Davies muddled his maths, and understated the economic benefits of the Hub. But the environmental impact on the west London residents along the flight path would be considerable – and the extended runway would nudge close to the boundary of the Prime Minister’s constituency.

Gatwick: a second runway

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John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Heathrow, faces many annoyances. Perhaps top of the list is the refusal of his counterpart and rival at Gatwick, Stewart Wingate, to accept the Davies Commission’s recommendation and shut up. The campaign to plant a new runway in Sussex was taken right to the wire, with the last edition of the London Evening Standard featuring a four-page wrap claiming: “The UK needs a new runway – only Gatwick can deliver.” Mr Wingate’s main arguments: Gatwick’s price tag is less than half that of Heathrow, and it is a deliverable project that will not breach environmental limits. But critics say the Sussex airport’s speciality is short-haul leisure, not long-haul business, and the economic potential is far less than expansion at Heathrow.

New runways at Heathrow and Gatwick

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The odds are short because there are at least two plausible scenarios. First, with Brexit bravado the Government could endorse both projects, setting up a multi-billion-pound race to the future. Second, Gatwick has already indicated that if the verdict goes to Heathrow, it may press ahead regardless with plans to build a second runway — citing passenger numbers that are racing beyond the projections of the Davies Commission.

From a passenger perspective, a pair of runways is the optimum outcome, because it expands capacity and intensifies competition. From an environmental standpoint, it is the worst conclusion, except possibly for …

“Boris Island”

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A new airport in the Thames Estuary remains as fanciful a notion as it was when Boris Johnson proposed the concept as London Mayor (and spent several millions promoting it). London is not Amsterdam, Dubai or Singapore (only one out of 10 passengers flying in or out of the city is in transit), and it does not need a new multi-runway airport.