A new report by York Aviation and Oxford Economics published today (24 June) highlights how a decision on where to build new airport capacity in the southeast is of paramount importance to every major city and region in Great Britain. Leading economists have calculated that building a new four runway hub airport would provide a £2.1 billion boost and over 17,500 new jobs across the UK.
Over the last 20 years the number of routes into Heathrow from domestic airports around the UK has fallen dramatically. As a result large parts of Britain are now without access to the UK’s main international airport and the links to massive overseas trade markets that it can provide. Today’s report, Making Connections, was written by experts from York Aviation and Oxford Economics, and commissioned by Transport for London. It demonstrates how a new four runway hub airport would restore those links and provide 49 more regional flights every day than a third runway at Heathrow would provide.
With a new hub seven cities and regions - Liverpool, Inverness, Newquay, Durham Tees Valley, Humberside, Dundee and Cardiff - would gain new air connections to the London hub and seven cities and regions would see their existing connections improved. The report illustrates how poorly Heathrow, where the number of domestic connections has slumped to just seven services, connects the nations and regions of the UK in comparison with European competitor hubs such as Schipol airport in Amsterdam.
The analysis highlights how a third runway at Heathrow would fail to reverse the decline and predicts that even with a third runway the number of domestic routes would decline further with the loss of the existing Leeds/Bradford route. A third runway would fill up very quickly due to existing demand at Heathrow, which already runs at 99 per cent of its capacity. Pressure on airlines to use slots for the most profitable routes would then mean domestic services would be crowded out again, which would prohibit new routes being established and mean that established services to cities like Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle would not be immune to a further loss of frequency.
Louise Congdon, Managing Partner at York Aviation, said: “There is no doubt that of all the options for expansion currently under consideration by the Airports Commission a new four-runway hub airport would provide the nations and regions with the best connectivity to the UK’s main international airport. This could include eight new regional routes and a more frequent service for cities that have a Heathrow connection currently. It might surprise some people that a third runway at Heathrow will do little to improve regional connectivity and not support any new routes due to commercial pressures on airlines”
Oxford Economics has calculated that the additional connectivity would lead to a £2.1 billion economic stimulus for the regional economies by 2050 in the form of increased Gross Value Added (GVA) and over 17,550 new jobs. This highlights the scale of economic benefit a new airport would provide for the whole of the UK. The four cities/regions that stand to gain the most are:
- Edinburgh - £451m GVA (2,590 jobs)
- Glasgow - £358m GVA (2,620 jobs)
- Aberdeen - £346m GVA (2,810 jobs)
- Tees Valley - £220m GVA (2,180 jobs)
Commenting on the new report, the Mayor of London’s chief advisor on aviation, Daniel Moylan, said: “This report highlights that only a new four runway hub airport can connect each nation and region of the UK to London and the rest of the world. The current expansion debate must not be allowed to become simply a matter of where to build a new strip of tarmac in the south east. This is a decision that matters to the whole of the UK and it’s ludicrous that Amsterdam airport provides more than three times the number of UK regional connections than our so called national airport. The report also nails the lie that a third runway would help the UK cities and regions that Heathrow has left behind. It won’t. It will be full within two or three years of opening and just as now airlines will be forced to concentrate on their most profitable long-haul routes. I hope the Airports Commission studies the report in detail and takes into account the economic needs of the UK as a whole when preparing its final report”.