David Learmount/LONDON
THE LATEST SCHEME to create badly needed runway space for London centres on building a new airport on reclaimed land in the Thames Estuary, with two further "feeder/reliever" airports to take the burden from Heathrow and Gatwick.
The recommendations come in a report by the UK parliamentary Transport Committee, which urges the drawing up of a wide-reaching, national, airports policy. It dismisses existing guidelines as a "collection" of unco-ordinated documents.
The report focuses strongly on the heavily congested London and South-East region. It suggests that runway capacity might be boosted by developing a new, reclaimed-land, airport in the Shoeburyness area of the Thames Estuary, some 80km (50 miles) east of London.
A further capacity boost would come from constructing a new runway at the Northolt military aerodrome in West London, parallel to London Heathrow Airport's runways, to make Northolt a plausible "feeder reliever" for Heathrow. Development of Redhill aerodrome, for the same task at London Gatwick, is recommended.
Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted operator BAA is criticised as being a quasi-monopoly. The reports suggests that the next Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) review of BAA, due in 2001, should consider dividing the ownership of the three airports. The UK Civil Aviation Authority remarks, however, that the MMC is obliged to take such action only if BAA is not serving the public interest.
Meanwhile, proposals are before the UK parliament to increase the airliner-movement limit at Stansted Airport from 78,000 a year to 120,000. The limit, set in 1987, was calculated to allow a throughput of 8 million passengers a year. A lower number of passengers per aircraft has been experienced, however, and, when the existing movement limit is achieved in 1997, throughput will be just over 5 million.
Source: Flight International
