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Thames Estuary Airport Will Be Explored as Heathrow Expansion Is Precluded

By Thomas Penny and Steve Rothwell                

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron

Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

The U.K. government will explore proposals to build an airport in the Thames estuary to increase London’s capacity for flights without expanding Heathrow, Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said.

The U.K. government will explore proposals to build an airport in the Thames estuary to increase London’s capacity for flights without expanding Heathrow, Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

Britain may build a 50 billion-pound ($77 billion) airport on the mudflats of the Thames estuary instead of expanding London’s crowded Heathrow hub as the government examines how to meet burgeoning demand for flights.
Options for boosting capacity include the new base on the Kent coast, east of the capital, Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said in a statement today. Construction of a third runway at Heathrow remains off the agenda, the statement said.
With Europe’s busiest hub operating at the limits of runway capacity and hemmed in by urban sprawl, London Mayor Boris Johnson has led a campaign for a new site at the mouth of the Thames, with planes approaching over the sea. British Airways, the top U.K. carrier, said more flights are needed but that a new airport may not be feasible and would damage existing links.
“A Thames Estuary hub would be an extremely complex project with many technical, operational, environmental and financial hurdles,” BA, a unit of International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (IAG), Europe’s third-largest carrier, said in a statement. “It would require the closure of Heathrow, which would have profound effects on jobs and business locations in west London, the M4 motorway corridor and the Thames Valley.”