Heathrow Airport has waded into the debate over the future of Britain’s airports with its own report arguing in favour of a single hub either at an expanded Heathrow or at a totally new site.

 

The report ‘One hub or none’ based on research by Frontier Economics states that lack of capacity at Heathrow is costing the UK up to £14Bn a year in lost trade and that figure could rise to £26Bn a year by 2030.

 

It claims that it is impossible for non-hub airports like Gatwick, Stansted or Birmingham to close the trade gap. Dual or split hubs also do not work the report claims because of the time it takes passengers and their luggage to travel from one to another; and because airline operators find it uneconomic and difficult to manage the logistics of splitting aircraft and flight plans between two sites.

 

Heathrow chief executive Colin Matthews said: “Only a single airport can meet the UK’s connectivity needs and the choice is therefore between adding capacity at Heathrow or closing Heathrow and replacing it with a new hub airport.”

 

“A hub airport is an airport where local passengers combine with transfer passengers to allow airlines to fly to more destinations more frequently than could be supported by local demand alone,” the report says. “Typically, passengers from shorthaul flights combine with passengers from the airport’s local area to fill longhaul aircraft. Transfer passengers are essential for a hub airport to serve many destinations. They allow the UK to connect to countries where it couldn’t sustain a direct daily flight itself. These flights support trade, jobs and economic growth.

 

“UK businesses trade 20 times more with emerging markets with daily flights than those with less frequent or no direct service. “Yet constraints at Heathrow – which is running at over 99% capacity – mean that the UK is unable to serve growing international demand. Heathrow is permitted 480,000 flights a year. All four of Heathrow’s competitor European hub airports – Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid and Amsterdam – have enough runway capacity to serve around 700,000 flights per year.”