Heathrow expansion - less is more

I’m against a third runway at Heathrow, for its location will bury forever places I used to enjoy cycling through when I was a child. I can’t let sentimentality stand in the way of progress but I can challenge the idea, in conventional terms, that a third runway at Heathrow is progress.

BAA has often said that Heathrow airport is running close to capacity and that this is causing it quality-of-service problems. Indeed, Heathrow, operating at 97%, has much higher capacity utilisation than its main rivals: Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

BAA says this causes stacking – in other words, aircraft stay in the air waiting for a time slot to land at Heathrow – and this causes environmental damage. BAA’s solution is to add runway capacity and therefore a third runway at Heathrow.

But is this the real problem? The other way of reducing the amount of stacking at Heathrow airport is to reduce the capacity utilisation of the runways to a similar level to the rate at Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. This is about 80%.

However, BAA says that such a reduction would mean that Heathrow could no longer sustain its currently high proportion of transfer passengers. These transfer passengers make up around 40% of Heathrow’s transport movements and BAA says that by having such a high proportion of transfer passengers Heathrow can service many more locations than its rivals and consequently it provides a powerful impetus to the London and therefore British economy.

There are two ways that throughput can be increased without increasing the number of flights: the first is to replace the domestic flights – air travel from other British airports – with surface transport; the second is to ensure that each landing slot is utilised more effectively – in other words, bigger planes rather than smaller planes.

Around 10% of flights in and out of Heathrow are domestic and this contributes to Heathrow airport being one of the main travel destination points in Britain. Yet despite this, Heathrow is not on the intercity rail network – let alone a high-speed rail network. If Heathrow became a centre of a high-speed rail network throughout Britain, rail would be a pleasant and more convenient alternative to flying to Heathrow. This would release landing slots to give Heathrow more international capacity.

We do not have to wait for a high-speed network. Early gains can be made by linking all the major cities of Britain to Heathrow airport by intercity rail at relatively low cost. Even if it means that Heathrow’s temporary intercity station is a ten-minute coach ride from the main terminals rather than directly underneath them.

Likewise, the current quasi-ownership of airport landing slots by airlines at Heathrow does not allow for their efficient utilisation. A rational reappraisal of the ownership and allocation of airport landing slots at Heathrow would ensure a greater throughput of passengers despite a reduction in capacity utilisation.

By doing this, Heathrow could maintain its position as the world’s busiest international airport for years to come and at the same time reduce the impact on those living around it and provide a better service to those passengers who use it.