New London airport considered on Thames Estuary
LONDON -- Fifty miles southeast of this city's glittering skyscrapers lies a quiet patch of sea that looks like any other. Only container ships disturb its peace, and the distant coast is a sleepy stretch of marsh and farm fields.
If London Mayor Boris Johnson has his way, this expanse of water at the mouth of the Thames river could be transformed into one of the world's biggest and busiest airports.
Proposals floated by Johnson's office for the site envision a four-runway airport, which would sit atop an artificial island or two, perhaps linked by tunnels. Boris Island, the tabloids call it. Johnson's critics call it "daft," "ridiculous" and "a crazy Bond fantasy."
Now Boris' fantasy island doesn't seem so daft after all.
The British government is now seriously mulling whether to build a huge airport in the so-called Thames Estuary region. Johnson has talked up an airport there since 2008, but his idea gained fresh impetus after Prime Minister David Cameron's government decided to kill plans to expand Heathrow, London's primary airport.
"We need to retain our status as a key global hub for air travel," Cameron said last Monday in reaffirming that a Thames Estuary airport is a serious option being considered in the government's aviation strategy. "Yes," he acknowledged, "this will be controversial."
The debate could shape the journeys of millions of Americans, who make nearly 2.5 million visits a year to Britain. The vast majority make landfall at the notoriously jam-packed and delay-plagued Heathrow, which also serves as a major transit point for U.S. travelers to Europe and beyond. In 2010, roughly 85% of the 57,000 reported U.S. flights to Britain landed at Heathrow, according to statistics from the Civil Aviation Authority.
A Thames Estuary airport would be "a clean sheet of paper," says Huw Thomas of Foster and Partners, a prominent British architecture firm that has proposed an airport near the mayor's site. "You're not facing any of the legacy issues that Heathrow suffers today."
Whatever its advantages, Boris Island faces opposition from an uneasy but powerful alliance of labor unions, environmentalists and residents of the Thames Estuary. The project's $60 billion price tag also works against it.
London's airport problem has "no clear-cut solution," says aviation consultant Mark Clarkson of ASM. "It's just a question of whether or not the government and industry bodies can … agree on going forward. Until they do that, in my view, the country's going to continue to suffer."
Heathrow's problems
Anyone who has flown to Heathrow regularly over the last decade knows what it's like to suffer. Heathrow is the world's busiest international airport as well as the busiest airport in Europe. In January alone, a record 5.2 million travelers rubbed shoulders in Heathrow's bustling lounges. Roughly a third were transferring to another flight.
The problem is that Heathrow was never meant for such traffic. From a small private air strip in the 1930s, it has grown haphazardly into a sprawling complex of terminals — but still has only two runways. Today, Heathrow's runways operate at nearly 99% of capacity, a surefire recipe for delays and cancellations.
