This year should have marked the tenth anniversary of the opening of a new runway at Stansted. Other airport expansion schemes have come and gone. Can you imagine any politician putting themselves in the crosshairs of Just Stop Oil and other environmental campaigners? The opposition in the courts, not to mention the disruption on the ground, over years and years would be far too politically costly.” “I see no realistic prospect of new runways at any of the major south-east hubs. So says a former boss of Gatwick, Paul Griffiths, the Briton who now runs the world’s busiest international hub, Dubai international. No new large runway has been opened in the south east for more than a generation – and growing opposition to airport expansion means none probably will.
It would also create 3,000 jobs and inject £1 billion a year into the local economy.īut, if recent history is anything to go by, Gatwick’s majority owner, France’s Vinci Airports, which bought a controlling stake for £2.9 billion in 2019, might as well give up on the £2.2 billion expansion plans now. Converting the reserve runway, which is currently used for emergencies, would not only improve punctuality but also increase capacity by 60 per cent, enabling the airport to handle 75 million passengers a year, up from 46.5 million in 2019.
The world’s busiest single runway airport has the worst punctuality of all European airports so far this summer, according to Eurocontrol, which manages European airspace. Gatwick Airport has submitted plans to make its “reserve runway” a second runway.
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