Gatwick unveils plans for second runway

A passenger sleeps on a row of seats at Gatwick Airport, near London, England, Monday, April 19, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded around the world since the volcano in southern Iceland begun erupting Wednesday for the second time in a month. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

A passenger sleeps on a row of seats at Gatwick Airport, near London, England, Monday, April 19, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded around the world since the volcano in southern Iceland begun erupting Wednesday for the second time in a month. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Published Jul 25, 2013

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London - Safer, quieter, cheaper: those are the likely benefits of a second runway at Gatwick, according to the airport's chief executive.

Stewart Wingate revealed the Sussex airport's submission to the Davies Commission, which is studying the aviation capacity crunch in South-east England. Sixty years after the idea was mooted, Gatwick's owners are proposing a new runway to the south of the main runway. An agreement not to build another runway expires in 2019, and the expanded airport could be ready by 2025.

Three options have been presented to Sir Howard Davies's commission: a close-spaced, medium-spaced or wide-spaced runway. The first would not allow both runways to be used simultaneously, but could double the present annual passenger numbers to 66 million. The middle option would allow one runway to be used for take-offs and the other for landings. This would increase capacity to 82 million - leapfrogging Heathrow's numbers.

A wide-spaced runway would allow full “mixed-mode” operations, with take-offs and landings from both runways extracting a maximum capacity of 87 million passengers. The submission asserts that “expanding Gatwick would be preferable to expanding locations closer to densely populated areas”. This is a reference to Heathrow's plans for a third runway, which require flight paths that traverse Greater London.

Gatwick's owners claim that the number of people affected by noise would be only five percent of those affected around Heathrow. The cost is estimated at £5bn to £9bn, including improvements to road and rail links. Heathrow's proposals for a third runway range from £14bn to £18bn. Mr Wingate told The Independent: “Our scheme would be privately funded and be a fraction of the cost of another runway at Heathrow.” He said charges at Gatwick would rise to pay for the expansion, but at “nowhere near the levels of Heathrow”.

Gatwick's owners have called for a “constellation of airports” around the capital, with a second runway at Stansted to stimulate competition. But Heathrow's submission to the Davies Commission maintains: “Gatwick's proposal for three competing two-runway airports in the South-east would not deliver a UK hub with the size and scale to compete internationally.” - The Independent

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