Subject: Dramatic news in today's Standard

Dramatic news in today’s Standard as it has got hold of documents which reveal 12 options Heathrow Airport has been looking at for new runway/airport.

John Stewart HACAN

03 May 2013

A “superhub” airport with four runways could be built in the home counties or west London under plans drawn up for Heathrow bosses.

The blueprint includes options for a huge new airport close to Maidenhead or Oxford , or doubling the number of runways at Heathrow, to handle 140  million passengers a year.

It was seized on by aviation experts as giving the first detailed insight into Heathrow’s thinking about airport expansion in the South-East.

A document called Heathrow 2025, Masterplan Options & Indicative Layouts, obtained by Aviation Week industry information service, outlines 10 options. They include plans for a four-runway airport at White Waltham in Berkshire, near Maidenhead and Bracknell, or at Haddenham in Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, about 15 miles from Oxford.

Alternatively, there is a proposal for Heathrow to have one extra runway to the east and another to the west, or four runways slightly to the west of the airport which would involve tunnelling the M25, filling in a local reservoir and using the existing terminals.

The study was commissioned by Heathrow from consultancy Mott MacDonald and also includes four different proposals for a three-runway airport — three at the existing airport and one to the west, over the M25.

Plans are also outlined for take-offs and landings on both existing runways, rather than alternating their use.

John Stewart, chairman of anti-airport expansion campaign group HACAN, called the revelations “utterly dramatic. Nobody expected Heathrow would be looking so far afield. It must mean they don’t feel at all confident of being able to win the argument about expanding the existing airport.”

Heathrow stressed it had not yet backed any of the proposals in the report, believed to have been compiled six months ago. A spokesman said: “These are early drafts of concepts developed by consultants last year. They are not designs that have been endorsed by Heathrow airport. Heathrow will be making its considered submission to the Airports Commission in July.”

Heathrow is understood to be considering at least 12 expansion options which are being whittled down.

Another proposal floated, from a group led by Concorde’s longest-serving pilot, Captain Jock Lowe, has proposed extending the two existing Heathrow runways to create four.

Daniel Moylan, the Mayor of London’s adviser on aviation, argued that the Mott MacDonald study indicated Heathrow chiefs may be “coming round” to Boris Johnson’s view that Heathrow cannot expand on its current site.

He said: “The Mayor believes that the right location for a hub airport is on the eastern side of the capital, where the scope for regeneration is greater and where space is less constrained.”

Councillor David Lyons, leader of Aylesbury Vale Green Party, called the proposal for Haddenham “absolutely mad. It’s such a far-fetched scheme to destroy a beautiful area. There would be a mass campaign (against it).”

The villages of Chearsley and Long Crendon would have to be largely removed, Aviation Week suggested.

White Waltham councillor Carwyn Cox branded the idea of a major international airport there as an “impractical solution”, which would blight green belt land and affect communities in Maidenhead, Windsor, Slough, Reading, Marlow and Henley.

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