Airport Meltdown

The recent actuality is full of news concerning UK’s air industry, whose symbol of Heathrow airport is again under the fire from critics. This time it’s almost look like everybody is guilty in the affair, BAA for its management failures especially since its recent takeover by the Spanish firm Ferroviara and British Airways for having an appalling record when it come to delivering luggage.

Yet behind the scenes the current government is also guilty in the affair. Guilty for not having a clear policy toward airport expansion, guilty for granting Heathrow terminal 5 planning permission a few years late, guilty for supporting the ‘ecologists’ arguments that air travel is bad for the environment; when in fact it only account for at best 2% of the UK’s carbon emissions.

While it is very easy to lambaste British Airways when it comes to the lost luggage, when an airport such as Heathrow is completely saturated, understaffed (clear failures from BAA here) and mismanaged. There are clearly other factors at play, undercapacity being one of them. Thence, since air travel WILL increase in the future no matter what the green lobby twats think, we need to plan future needs in advance.

The trend toward ever higher air travel exists since air travel was created. In the case of Heathrow, which is the first airport in the world in terms of international passengers, future proofing the airport for ever higher passengers numbers is the way forward, thence Terminal 5 was already needed a few years back in order to have spare capacity. Granting the planning permission right back in 1993 or even a few years later but not in 2001, would have provided spare capacity, allowing shorter queues and quicker luggage delivery. On the same vein, if aircrafts are late, it is often because either there is no parking space or because there are a few aircrafts queuing for takeoff just before the runway. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, JFK airport in New York, Schipol in Amsterdam all with up to a third fewer passengers than in Heathrow have between four and six runways, Heathrow only got two with a third one for 2020 at best.

What I am about to say will undoubtedly be shocking for some, but the fact is that if we still want London and the United Kingdom to act as the gateway of Europe, Heathrow NEEDS space and there is space right north of it, providing the demolition of some homes. Demolishing homes and compensating the owners do have a cost, not being accessible from overseas also have a cost, in job, GDP growth and tax receipts. Between the relocation of at most 4000 people and firms relocating from the City to Paris or Frankfurt because travelling to London is a nightmare. I prefer to choose the former even if it is not politically correct to say so.

Now I already hear people saying to me, ‘but we can build a brand new airport in the Thames estuary’. This is indeed possible, but would cost up to dozens of billions, to have an airport whose catchment area would be smaller than Heathrow’s one, whose gearing up to full capacity would take 20 or so years and where transports links would have to be build from scratch thereby adding further to the costs. At the same time while high speed rail, would undoubtedly reduce the pressure on from short haul flights to Northern Britain and Europe, high speed rail will not be able to compete once the distance exceeds 1500 km. While potentially up to ten millions journeys could be transferred, growth will still continue apace on medium and long haul flights, cancelling this transfer in a few years.

What is true for Heathrow is also true for Gatwick and Stansted, expansion is also needed there even if for Gatwick there is no emergency apart from a second runway. Moreover if as some proposes, BAA is to be break up in order to allow competition between the three airports, it would be unfair to only allow expansion in Heathrow only.

By listening to lunatics like ‘lets ban air travel altogether’ and more generally to NIMBY activists. The government is guilty of not making any decision, but since the needs of the 2020’s must be planned and anticipated now, this is going to costs London and Britain a lot in terms of lost opportunities for jobs and economic growth.