Boris Johnson unveils preferred London airport options
London Mayor Boris Johnson withdraws his support for expansion of Gatwick airport and instead backs a new estuary airport or Stansted expansion to boost London’s aviation capacity.
Boris Johnson has revealed his three preferred options for improving the capital’s airport capacity: a new “Inner Estuary” airport on the Isle of Grain in Kent, a new “Outer Estuary” airport dubbed Boris Island, or expansion of the existing airport at Stansted.
Detailed proposals on all three options will be submitted by the end of this week to the Howard Davies commission, which is considering options for expanding UK aviation capacity. Mr Davies is expected to announce his initial findings in December before unveiling his final report in 2015.
Mr Johnson’s three options were narrowed down from a longlist of 16 during a year-long study. He said at City Hall this morning that ambitious global cities are already “stealing a march” on London by building “mega airports that plug them directly into the global supply chains that we need to be part of“.
“For London and the wider UK to remain competitive we have to build an airport capable of emulating that scale of growth,” he said.
Mr Johnson claimed that building a new hub airport in the capital would support more than 375,000 new jobs by 2050 and increase the value of goods and services produced in the UK by £742bn. A new hub could also quadruple the number of destinations currently served in China and South America by London and raise by half the number of destinations reached in the US, said the submission.
‘Fortissimo flatulence’
Mr Johnson previously considered expanding Gatwick airport but has been a long-term opponent of expansions to Heathrow airport, which he called today a “crackers” proposal.
In April he voiced his opposition at an anti-Heathrow rally in Richmond, railing against hundreds of thousands more planes that would descend across the city in “great flying fleets of fortissimo flatulence”.
In May the Greater London Assembly announced its opposition to a new estuary airport and instead backed exploiting unused capacity at Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted airports.