Airport has to be by design, not by accident. Heathrow's location was an accident and future mistakes are not an option
When Fairey Aviation test-pilot Norman Macmillan force-landed on open farmland in 1925 near the hamlet of Heath Row in Middlesex, UK, he could have had little idea of what he was starting. This unscheduled arrival, the first in the locale, as the story goes, was to sow the seeds for what would become the world's busiest international airport.
Now, 76 years on, 63 million people pass through the airport every year, a figure which will increase to 90 million over the next 20 years due to the approval of Terminal 5 (T5).
But the process to gain this approval has been fraught with delay - the public inquiry lasted four years, postponing the planned opening by at least five years. Only approvals for nuclear power stations can take longer in the UK. The fact is that airport expansion everywhere is becoming as difficult to implement as it is vital if the increasing demand for air travel is to be met.
The increasing environmental opposition to airport expansion has made the subject a thorny one, with the airport operators less than enthusiastic about providing hard numbers on their growth capabilities. Governments everywhere, particularly the one in Whitehall should take serious note of the bumpy ride that the T5 development has suffered. Although the UK Government has vowed that the experience will not be repeated in future applications, it will struggle to turn its intentions into reality. Airport expansion will only get harder, not easier, and in the next five years the UK Government has to face the decision on where to locate an additional runway to serve the business and leisure travel needs of the nation's most prosperous area: the south-east.
The unfortunate quirk of fate that made Macmillan force-land where he did had the effect of placing the London's main airport directly to its west. Owing to the prevailing winds, all aircraft have to arrive or depart over densely populated residential areas.
Unlike Paris, where its main airport Charles de Gaulle is to the north of the city, the UK does not have the luxury of banning civil flights over the centre of its capital city and centre of government. Indeed, to the delight of tourists (but not the denizens of the wealthy residential districts of Chelsea, Fulham and Richmond), most flights arriving at Heathrow fly directly along the River Thames past the Houses of Parliament.
Also its location, surrounded by London's suburbs, means that the area is already severely congested. It is vital that the airport's ground infrastructure is developed in tandem with the new terminal to ensure that there is not systemwide gridlock in 2007.
These factors make expansion at Heathrow far more painful for local residents - a group that have an increasing amount of clout in transport policy - than at other airports. The bad news is that the new Heathrow terminal is only part of what is needed in this region of the UK to ensure capacity meets demand.
Given the drawn-out debate over T5, talk of approval for a third runway at Heathrow is almost worthless although it will not stop certain interested parties quietly campagning for one.
The fact is that while France is already allocating ground for its next all-new Paris airport, even the concept of adding urgently needed runway capacity to a provincially located airport in the south-east of the UK - like Gatwick or Stansted - is viewed with scepticism in many quarters.
Ten years ago the UK's then environment minister said that governments "cannot always respond to demands for transport infrastructure simply because those demands exist". More recently the current UK Government stated that a policy of "demand management" rather than "predict and provide" will be adopted for the provision of additional runway capacity in the south-east of the country.
From the airline industry's perspective, the omens are not good. Long-term growth in demand is a certainty if it is uncontrolled. So what would the controls be, if the government decides to use them? Aviation fuel taxes are a weapon that the UK Government has mentioned in this context. In Brussels the European Commission is dying to apply aviation fuel tax for "environmental" reasons.
If there is one lesson that the airline industry can learn from the agonisingly long and expensive decision process for T5, it is to give careful consideration to where new airports are located relative to urban areas, and then to adopt the International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines on planning regulations for "land use policy" in their vicinity.
Source: Flight International
