Building a new airport in the Thames estuary to solve southeast England's runway capacity problem is a "non-starter", says UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) chief executive Richard Everitt. The need to create flightpaths in and out of the proposed Cliffe airport would mean traffic cuts at Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted, says Everitt. He told an Aviation Club lunch in London last week: "Our strong preference is for additional runway capacity at existing airports." The government is due to announce its plans in a White Paper soon. Meanwhile, NATS is confident it can train enough new controllers to avoid a repeat of recent flight delay chaos. The agency is also pressing the government to relax its charges cap, following a 16% drop in its revenue since 11 September last year.
Source: Flight International