Description and Details

Lon­don Heathrow Air­port is one of the busiest air­ports in the world and serves as the ter­mi­nal for many flights as well as the hub for numer­ous inter­na­tion­al con­nect­ing flights. Due to the heavy vol­ume of the air­port and sim­i­lar size air­ports in Ams­ter­dam and Paris, there is a wor­ry that Heathrow may decline in use if there are bet­ter alter­na­tives. Efforts are being made to keep Heathrow in its dom­i­nant posi­tion and to con­tin­ue to sim­u­late UK’s econ­o­my by expand­ing the airport. 

The con­struc­tion of a third run­way in London’s Heathrow Air­port was brought up to the pub­lic in 2009 by the UK gov­ern­ment. The goal of the third run­way is to ease con­ges­tion while increas­ing the airport’s capac­i­ty by 50% and intro­duc­ing up to 280,000 new flights annu­al­ly. The third run­way would be 2,200 m long via a bridge over the M25 with exten­sions to Ter­mi­nals 2 and 5. The plan is strong­ly sup­port­ed by sev­er­al indus­tries, includ­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try and trade unions. It is antic­i­pat­ed that the increased capac­i­ty by build­ing the third run­way will improve flight con­nec­tions, cre­ate more job oppor­tu­ni­ties and build Heathrow’s resilience to flight delays. 

The run­way expan­sion will be built almost com­plete­ly on com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion and has caused sig­nif­i­cant amounts of protest from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. Hun­dreds of homes will have to be aban­doned, and the cur­rent hous­ing mar­ket in the area is lim­it­ed, mak­ing it hard to find a place to live. Many com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have been res­i­dents for decades, mak­ing leav­ing dif­fi­cult. Also, a grade‑l list­ed church and eight grade-ll list­ed build­ings will be demol­ished. Addi­tion­al­ly, the noise of air­planes has been trou­ble­some to thou­sands of res­i­dents in Lon­don. From an envi­ron­men­tal view­point, the expan­sions may increase CO2 emis­sions enough for the air­port to fail its car­bon-neu­tral­i­ty plan by 2050. Offi­cials from the air­port sup­port­ing the expan­sion claim the car­bon neu­tral­i­ty goals will still be met.

Note that apart from Heathrow’s third run­way expan­sion plan, oth­er sug­gest­ed alter­na­tives have been pro­posed, includ­ing increas­ing the use of oth­er region­al air­ports like Man­ches­ter. The avi­a­tion indus­try and its aligned busi­ness­es are against this alter­na­tive as it cre­ates less of a hub in the area. Oth­er alter­na­tives con­sist of high-speed rail­ways to the new air­port in Thames Estu­ary, but still, air­lines pre­fer secur­ing the hub sta­tus of Heathrow.

The plan for Heathrow expansion’s was ini­tial­ly block by the supreme court due to cli­mate change grounds. After more than ten years of ten­sion, the delayed expan­sion plan got the ban lift­ed on Decem­ber 16th, 2022 by the UK Supreme Court. Despite this lift­ed ban, the expan­sion is still paused for inter­nal review to ensure envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and fund­ing is met. 

CEE sub­jects: Con­struc­tion Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment, Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Sus­tain­able Infrastructure

Discussion Questions

  • Is the expan­sion of Heathrow Air­port a deci­sion for sim­ply eco­nom­ic inter­est? What will the future of Heathrow be if it’s not expanded?
  • How will you clas­si­fy dif­fer­ent types of stake­hold­ers in this debate? Do you have a “com­pro­mised plan for everyone”?
  • What do you think of the alter­na­tive plans? Which one do you pre­fer and why?
  • This is a typ­i­cal exam­ple of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion vs. human devel­op­ment, but the lat­ter is more impor­tant even­tu­al­ly and the cli­mate agree­ment is dis­obeyed. If this is the case, how can we ensure oth­er cli­mate plans can be suc­cess­ful­ly implemented?

References

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