Heathrow should not expand and a new Thames Estuary airport is unnecessary, a conference of aviation specialists concluded last Thursday. Other existing airports should instead be allowed to grow and Britain must resist attempts to create one major ‘hub’ airport.

Delegates at the Royal Aeronautical Society in Mayfair were asked to vote whether a hub airport is the best option for future aviation provision in the South East. Nearly two thirds of them said no.

When asked where future airport expansion should take place only about a third of delegates voted in favour of another runway at Heathrow. Less than 10% supported an Estuary Airport and even fewer supported developing Stansted. More than a third of the audience voted for ‘none of the above’.

Presentations from Heathrow chief executive Colin Matthews and the London Mayor’s aviation advisor Daniel Moylan put forward cases for developing new airport capacity to the west and east of the capital respectively.

But Gatwick Airport’s chief executive Stewart Wingate cautioned against creating a “very dominant airport”. Allowing Gatwick and Stansted to each build a second runway instead would, he said, provide better “resilience to disruption” should one airport experience difficulties.

He added that in the medium term there is “an awful lot of spare capacity in the system” that needs to be better used. “At Gatwick we have 11M passengers worth of spare capacity a year and Stansted’s spare capacity must be 20M.”

Birmingham Airport’s chief executive Paul Kehoe concurred, saying: “We should certainly look at available capacity. Our airport could double its capability tomorrow.”

But deputy director of the Aviation Environment Federation Cait Hewitt said: “London’s airports can probably meet all demand for the foreseeable future. It is a myth that Britain has an airport capacity crisis. Government’s forecasts for air passenger demand have kept falling since 2000.”

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