A Thames Estuary Airport

Points of concern for a Thames Estuary airport and the need to consider other options as well

The debate is on!

The Mayor of London’s proposals for an airport in the Thames Estuary has received widespread publicity, not all of it favourable. Since then, two other proposals in the Thames estuary have been aired: one on the Isle of Grain, and one on the Isle of Sheppey. Ahead of any policy decision by government, what do the airlines think?

BAR UK welcomes the debate because it recognises that the UK's hub airport, Heathrow, is full and that more hub airport capacity is urgently required.

However, all three estuary airport proposals raise a wide number of concerns that need to be assessed before any final decision may be taken in respect of a new hub-airport site.

Those concerns fall into main areas: location and affordability.

Issues to assess include:

1. Heathrow serves not only London and SE England, but also those from SW England, Southern England, S Wales and southern Midlands. A Thames Estuary location would require them all to go through, or around, London to access it.

2. Heathrow is a major hub airport with massive investment costs underpinning it. Would airlines be able to afford to leave Heathrow, with all its outstanding investment costs, and relocate to a new airport that would most llikely have even more costs attached to it?

3. With a future passenger flow of 90-120 million passengers per annum, of whom 70% would be starting or finishing their air journeys at Heathrow (i.e. 63-84 million per annum), what range of transportation systems could handle such a volume, with proper resilience measures built-in?

4. The closure of Heathrow would create huge unemployment (over 70,000 direct jobs at the airport) and kill the economy of the Thames Valley and west London, so affecting airline carryings as well as jobs.

5. How might such a new airport be funded, possibly impacting multi-billions of pounds of public money, whereas expansion at Heathrow is primarily funded by the airport operator and its airline customers.

7. How can the safety concerns in respect of the bird population of the estuary in general be satisfactorily mitigated?

Futhermore, it is understood that any airport operating in the estuary would:

a) severely affect the use of continental airspace, and require, if actually feasible, considerable re-designs to it.

b) severely affect the operations at least one of the existing London airports on the eastern side of the metropolis, over and above the proposed closure of Heathrow.

c) still require many departing or arriving aircraft to fly over London, so nullifying one of the reasons for building an estuary airport.

n.b. it needs to be noted that all sites that may be proposed would need to be properly assessed in a similar manner.

FUTURE ACTIONS

Two actions are required:

a) an aviation policy that will provide the framework for additional hub airport capacity as a matter of priority

b) an aviation policy that will satisfactorily address the UK's need for long-term hub airport capacity in the context of national infrastructure. In the context of any new hub airport, this must include examining all other options in additon to those proposed for the Thames estuary.

Damage to the UK economy is being felt right now, because it's simply not possible to plan future growth without any policy on future capacity.