Det som slo meg mest etter Le Bourget er hvor stille de nye motorene er.
Heathrow boss: It's about more than a runway
John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Heathrow Airport said: "This debate has never been about a runway, it's been about the future we want for Britain. Expanding Heathrow will keep Britain as one of the world's great trading nations, right at the heart of the global economy."
A third runway at London Heathrow airport will never
fly
Undated handout photo issued by Heathrow Airport of an artist's impresson of option 3 for the third runway North at Heathrow as Heathrow chiefs today put forward three options at the west London airport, saying that any of the proposals will be good, and essential, for Britain.
Heathrow is in the wrong place - on the wrong side of the capital, more precisely. Its flight paths run directly above some of the city's most densely populated neighbourhoods. Some 750,000 people - a full 28 per cent of those across the entire EU whose lives are blighted by aircraft noise - are unlucky enough to live near London's largest airport.
Britain's Supreme Court has ruled that air pollution levels around Heathrow - most dangerously, nitrogen dioxide - already breach the legal limits. To add another 250,000 flights a year to the present 470,000, with the concomitant increase in road traffic, is simply unimaginable.
For all the £20m spent on the report, it is still not certain that London actually needs a new runway. The city already has seven spread over six sites, as good as any serious competitor in Europe, and much of the capacity remains unused. Air traffic projections are notoriously unreliable. Only a fool would gamble tens of billions of pounds on a flimsy prediction that London may be short of capacity by 2030.
The case made by Heathrow management that London's reputation as a centre for global business depends on the airport upgrading its "hub" status by handling more transit passengers is flimsy at best. The proportion of business passengers has been falling - from 38 per cent at the turn of the century to 30 per cent last year. More than two-thirds of those who pass through the airport are tourists. To slot in more flights for business leaders to the booming cities of China, Heathrow has merely to cede to Gatwick or Stansted a few bucket-and-spade routes to Mediterranean resorts.
The importance of transit customers is overstated. The growth in air travel has been in point-to-point flights by smaller, fuel-efficient aircraft. And, unlike Frankfurt or Amsterdam, London is the final destination for the vast majority of air travellers. Heathrow counts 36 per cent of its passengers as in transit but across the capital's airports the figure falls to below 15 per cent.
As it happens, Heathrow is a terrible advertisement for Britain. Beyond the superficial glitter of Terminal 5, much of the site comprises a series of down-at-heel sheds bursting at the seams with lucrative (for the airport operator) shopping concessions. Those unfortunate enough to arrive at, say, Terminal 3 can only shake their head in wonderment that one of the world's pre-eminent cities can be content with such squalor. Delays and disruption are endemic. Of the dozen flights I took in and out of Heathrow in the past two months, I counted only two that left or arrived in time.
Airports Commission recommends third runway
A new runway at Heathrow is the best way to boost Britain's economy and secure the UK's future in global aviation, according to the independent Airports Commission. That is the long-awaited judgment from the panel led by Sir Howard Davies
The cost to the public purse is prohibitive. The commission guesses at a price tag of £18bn or so for the runway, with another £5bn-£6bn for the necessary improvements to surface transport to cope with the extra passengers. Transport for London has suggested the latter figure could end up as high as £20bn. That may be an overestimate. But, whichever way you look at it, British taxpayers would have to pay a massive subsidy to the shareholders of Heathrow.
So why has Heathrow fought so hard for a new runway? Easy. It wants to stifle competition. The airport is a cash cow, but slightly less so since the Competition Commission forced it to divest ownership of Gatwick. London's second airport has been transformed by the break-up, but a third runway, the Airports Commission acknowledges, would divert back to Heathrow traffic from London's other airports. The owners would regain a near monopoly.
What London needs are better surface connections between the other airports and faster rail and road routes into the capital. Heathrow will soon benefit from Crossrail. Rather than spend billions diverting the M4 and M25 motorways around Heathrow the government should be investing in surface connections to Gatwick and Stansted. If, as is possible, capacity does come under strain, it would be much cheaper and faster to add a second runway at Gatwick.
Politics will combine with logic to doom a third runway. David Cameron, the prime minister, does not have the majority to take the legislation through parliament. The heavyweights in the Conservative party opposed to expansion are led by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, and his would-be successor, Zac Goldsmith. They are backed by several members of the cabinet and by many local Tory MPs.
So this is one of those moments in politics when a prime minister can marry principle with pragmatism. "No ifs, no buts, no third runway", the prime minister promised a few years back. He was right.
By:
Philip Stephens
You need not be a cynic to suspect policy-based evidence-making
You need not be a cynic to suspect policy-based evidence-making
Undated handout photo issued by Heathrow Airport of an artist's impresson of option 3 for the third runway North at Heathrow as Heathrow chiefs today put forward three options at the west London airport, saying that any of the proposals will be good, and essential, for Britain.
Britain's Airports Commission has done what was expected of it. It
has called for a third runway at Heathrow. You do not have to be a cynic to
suspect policy-based evidence-making. Unkind souls might call the report an
establishment stitch-up. Never mind. Its conclusions are destined for the long
grass. The pity is that money, time and energy will be wasted on a debate that
can have only one outcome. Forget the commission's expensively deceptive
cost-benefit analyses. The runway will never be built.
Heathrow is in the wrong place - on the wrong side of the capital, more precisely. Its flight paths run directly above some of the city's most densely populated neighbourhoods. Some 750,000 people - a full 28 per cent of those across the entire EU whose lives are blighted by aircraft noise - are unlucky enough to live near London's largest airport.
Britain's Supreme Court has ruled that air pollution levels around Heathrow - most dangerously, nitrogen dioxide - already breach the legal limits. To add another 250,000 flights a year to the present 470,000, with the concomitant increase in road traffic, is simply unimaginable.
For all the £20m spent on the report, it is still not certain that London actually needs a new runway. The city already has seven spread over six sites, as good as any serious competitor in Europe, and much of the capacity remains unused. Air traffic projections are notoriously unreliable. Only a fool would gamble tens of billions of pounds on a flimsy prediction that London may be short of capacity by 2030.
The case made by Heathrow management that London's reputation as a centre for global business depends on the airport upgrading its "hub" status by handling more transit passengers is flimsy at best. The proportion of business passengers has been falling - from 38 per cent at the turn of the century to 30 per cent last year. More than two-thirds of those who pass through the airport are tourists. To slot in more flights for business leaders to the booming cities of China, Heathrow has merely to cede to Gatwick or Stansted a few bucket-and-spade routes to Mediterranean resorts.
The importance of transit customers is overstated. The growth in air travel has been in point-to-point flights by smaller, fuel-efficient aircraft. And, unlike Frankfurt or Amsterdam, London is the final destination for the vast majority of air travellers. Heathrow counts 36 per cent of its passengers as in transit but across the capital's airports the figure falls to below 15 per cent.
As it happens, Heathrow is a terrible advertisement for Britain. Beyond the superficial glitter of Terminal 5, much of the site comprises a series of down-at-heel sheds bursting at the seams with lucrative (for the airport operator) shopping concessions. Those unfortunate enough to arrive at, say, Terminal 3 can only shake their head in wonderment that one of the world's pre-eminent cities can be content with such squalor. Delays and disruption are endemic. Of the dozen flights I took in and out of Heathrow in the past two months, I counted only two that left or arrived in time.
Airports Commission recommends third runway
A new runway at Heathrow is the best way to boost Britain's economy and secure the UK's future in global aviation, according to the independent Airports Commission. That is the long-awaited judgment from the panel led by Sir Howard Davies
The cost to the public purse is prohibitive. The commission guesses at a price tag of £18bn or so for the runway, with another £5bn-£6bn for the necessary improvements to surface transport to cope with the extra passengers. Transport for London has suggested the latter figure could end up as high as £20bn. That may be an overestimate. But, whichever way you look at it, British taxpayers would have to pay a massive subsidy to the shareholders of Heathrow.
So why has Heathrow fought so hard for a new runway? Easy. It wants to stifle competition. The airport is a cash cow, but slightly less so since the Competition Commission forced it to divest ownership of Gatwick. London's second airport has been transformed by the break-up, but a third runway, the Airports Commission acknowledges, would divert back to Heathrow traffic from London's other airports. The owners would regain a near monopoly.
What London needs are better surface connections between the other airports and faster rail and road routes into the capital. Heathrow will soon benefit from Crossrail. Rather than spend billions diverting the M4 and M25 motorways around Heathrow the government should be investing in surface connections to Gatwick and Stansted. If, as is possible, capacity does come under strain, it would be much cheaper and faster to add a second runway at Gatwick.
Politics will combine with logic to doom a third runway. David Cameron, the prime minister, does not have the majority to take the legislation through parliament. The heavyweights in the Conservative party opposed to expansion are led by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, and his would-be successor, Zac Goldsmith. They are backed by several members of the cabinet and by many local Tory MPs.
So this is one of those moments in politics when a prime minister can marry principle with pragmatism. "No ifs, no buts, no third runway", the prime minister promised a few years back. He was right.
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