Chancellor Rachel Reeves put a vision “to make Britain the best connected place in the world to do business” on Wednesday, as she indicated the support of the massive airport throughout London.
Reeves said that the government wants a third runway in Heathrow – although it will take more than a decade – and indicates support for more immediate expansion at Gatwick and Loton airports. Projects in Stansted and City have already been approved.
If it is delivered, expanded airports can handle 309 million passengers annually – an increase of 85 percent on a 167 million traveler who used airports in 2023, which last year in which full data is located – according to the Times times analysis.
The size of the plans shows how the airports, and their group of international investor owners, are largely betting that air travel will continue to grow in the coming decades, without being unable to fear carbon emissions.
“The advisor is right to obtain airports,” said Karen de, CEO of Adaristuk. “Expanding the ability to support growth.. It will not come at the expense of our sustainability goals.”
But industrial experts said that the growth of this scale would lead to serious challenges, including the need to redraw flight paths in the sky over London and southeastern England to accommodate all additional aircraft, which probably affects new societies with noise pollution.
The enthusiasm from the consultant is barely tensions within the cabinet that appeared on the most controversial infrastructure project in the United Kingdom for decades.
If it succeeds, it is also possible to make the flights more expensive, especially from Heathrow, as the airport raises the drop fees imposed on airlines to recover the cost of building the runway.
However, Becrom Basu, the partner in Lek Consulting, said that Heathrow advised, said the new capacity will be used.
“The London market was struggling to fulfill the demand for a while. I think investors could be comfortable, there will be a working state of this level of demand.”
The most dangerous challenge is likely to be the effect of airport expansion on carbon emissions in the UK.
“I find somewhat difficult to know how you can have a third runway in Heathrow and a great expansion in the flight numbers in Gatwick within the government carbon budget,” one of them said closely with the conservative government’s decision for 2015 to support a third runway in Heathrow. The airport has never put forward a planning request due to the epidemic.
Reeves raises itself as a consultant ready to make “bold decisions in the national interest”, Reeves called for the Heathrow administration to develop plans to build a third runway once this summer.
While previous governments have provided lukewarm support to the controversial project, the CEO of Heathro Thomas and Oldby said he believed the airport “will now sit around the table together” with the government to present the third runway.
“We can trust the government, and they can be with us for many years,” he said.
Weldby said that the airport will now finish its 2019 expansion plan, which was suspended when the epidemic was struck in 2020. A power plant.
But a little doubt about the size of the political challenges still faces the project.
Earlier this month, Energy Minister Ed Miliband said that he would not resign if the third runway continues, while it appeared to be surrendered by the largest deduction of the cabinet in the project.
But behind the scenes, Miliband was said to be “angry”, according to a government figure familiar with the situation. It was not among the cabinet ministers in the speech.
Other cabinet ministers were also surprised by what appeared to be a sudden decision by Reeves several weeks ago. A person close to the discussions said: “There was already a big row on this topic, between the treasury and only everyone.”
Even some Whitehal officials suggested that Reeves tried to rebound Prime Minister Sir Kerr Starmer – who previously voted against the procedure – to publicly support the project. He has so far avoided doing this, and avoided a question about him in the Prime Minister's question session last week.
Despite the warm words of Reeves, one of them said skeptical within the government that the approval of development in Heathrow still has to pass strict standards on climate, air pollution and noise.
They said: “They still have to reach the same criteria that they did 24 hours before this announcement.” “There are a lot of ways to run on this.”
Meanwhile, the old London mayor in London, Saad Khan, said that “simply was not convinced that you can get hundreds of thousands of additional flights in Heathrow every year without a very harmful effect on our environment.”
Ruth Kadbury, Labor MP of Penteford and Ehlore – and Chairman of the chosen transportation committee – said that the committee will now examine “the clarity of the links between the airport expansion and growth.”
Cadbury said it suspects that the project can bring the four tests conducted by the government on climate change, regional economic benefits, noise and air pollution.
“The test is whether the project provides growth to the United Kingdom (companies) as a whole, for nations and regions, and does not really, she said.
In contrast, Reeves insisted that the third runway would benefit the entire country.
Reeves insisted that the expansion was compatible with the “legal, environmental and climatic obligations” of the government, as it indicated the technological progress that could pave the way for a “cleaner and more green flight”.
The aviation industry agrees that it can grow while carbon removal. The road map to Safar 2050, published in 2022, assumes that the number of passengers is still growing during the low emissions.
To do this, it depends largely on the “sustainable aviation fuel” or Safs, which consists of a variety of sources of crops and cooking oil used to household waste. The industry is estimated that it can emit about 70 percent of carbon dioxide during its traditional flight life.
But it is much more expensive than jet fuel and is currently available in small quantities only. Airlines said that the industry will need more government support to expand the scope of SAFS to reach zero.
Colin Walker, head of the Energy and Climate Energy Research Group, said that the government's hopes that sustainable aviation fuel will make additional emissions from Heathrow's “unrealistic” expansion.
He said: “The third runway will increase the emissions to be further than the ability of this fuel to compensate them.”
Meanwhile, planning experts said that Heathrow spent decades of growth to no avail.
“Heathrow will have to run heavily and the government's decisions will be challenged along the way,” said Alexeer Watson, a planning partner in Taylor Wesyge.
“The only people who will win this are lawyers.”
