![]() Locations of proposed Thames Estuary airports, from west to east: 1. Cliffe; 2. Grain (Thames Hub); 3. Maplin Sands, Foulness; 4. Off the Isle of Sheppey; 5. Shivering Sands ("Boris Island") with the exclusion zone around the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery. | |
Location | Essex and Kent, UK |
---|
A potential Thames Estuary Airport has been proposed at various times since the 1940s. London's existing principal airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton are each sub-optimally located in various ways, such as being too close to built-up areas or requiring aircraft to fly low over London. In the case of Heathrow, the growth of air traffic has meant that the airport is operating at 98% capacity. Several locations for a new airport have been proposed in the Thames Estuary, to the east of London. These include Maplin Sands off Foulness on the north side of the estuary; Cliffe and the Isle of Grain in Kent on the south side; and artificial islands located off the Isle of Sheppey such as the "Boris Island" proposal championed by Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London. Economic considerations have so far ruled out a new coastal airport, while political considerations have ruled out a new inland airport, [1] leaving planners with an as-yet-unresolved dilemma.
On 17 December 2013 the "Airports Commission: interim report" was published. The proposal for an Isle of Grain airport underwent further study in 2014 before the final report was delivered in Summer 2015.[ citation needed ]
Before World War II, Croydon Airport was London's principal airport. In 1943 the government built a new heavy military transport airfield on a rural site to the west of London near the village of Heathrow. It was converted to civilian use after the war and went into service as London Airport, later London Heathrow Airport, on 25 February 1946. Another airport already existed at Gatwick and had been used since 1930 as a relief airport for Croydon. A rapid growth in air traffic during the 1950s led to Gatwick becoming London's official second airport in 1954 to accommodate the overspill from Heathrow. Neither location is ideal – the prevailing winds over Heathrow mean that flights have to approach the airport by flying over London, and growth of the city means both airports are now located in built-up areas. [2]
In 1943 the aircraft designer Frederick George Miles of Miles Aircraft and long time associate, architect Guy Morgan suggested the construction of a new airport, including a flying boat base, between Cliffe and Allhallows. Intended to serve 8 million passengers per year, the cost of the scheme was estimated at £20 million. It was planned with a central Terminus, three concrete runways each two and a half miles long and was intended to operate 24 hours a day. [3]
By 1960, it was becoming apparent that further air capacity was needed. Stansted, a former military airfield in Essex, was proposed as a third airport in 1963. A Government White Paper endorsed Stansted in 1967 and in 1968, after an inconclusive public inquiry, the Government appointed Hon. Mr Justice Roskill to head the Commission on the Third London Airport (the "Roskill Commission") to review sites for a third airport. Cublington in the Vale of Aylesbury was its chosen site. [4] It was seen offering the best access, as it was situated on the key London-Birmingham axis, it would be away from built-up areas and it would cost less than most of the alternatives. [5] The proposal met with strong opposition from local people and more broadly from politicians and middle-class voters which made it politically untenable. [6]
One influential member of the Roskill Commission, Colin Buchanan, dissented on environmental and planning grounds and proposed an alternative site at Maplin Sands, Foulness, in the Thames Estuary. [7] This opened the door to strong political opposition against Cublington and in April 1971 the government announced that the site at Maplin Sands had been selected for the third London airport, even though it was the most remote and overall the most expensive of the options considered, and that planning would begin immediately. [8] In due course the Maplin Development Act received royal assent in October 1973. [9] In 1973 a Special Development Order was made under the Town and Country Planning Acts granting planning permission for the project, and the Maplin Development Authority was constituted and began its work. The project would have included not just a major airport, but a deep-water harbour suitable for the container ships then coming into use, a high-speed rail link together with the M12 and M13 motorways to London, and a new town for the accommodation of the thousands of workers who would be required. The new town would eventually cover 82 square miles, with a population of 600,000 people, while the surface route to the airport would require a corridor 100 yards wide and over 30 miles long. The cost would be a then-astronomical £825 million (£8,448 million today), which many – particularly in the Labour Party, which was in opposition at the time – regarded as unacceptable. [10]
The Maplin airport project was abandoned in July 1974 when Labour came to power. [11] A reappraisal of passenger projections indicated that there would be capacity until 1990 at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, aided by regional airports. [12] The scheme was abandoned in favour of a cheaper plan to enlarge Stansted rather than building an entirely new airport; the requirement for a container ship harbour was to be discharged by the development of Felixstowe. The dilemma regarding the location of an additional airport, whether inland or on the coast, was summed up by an airport expert quoted by New Scientist magazine in 1973: "An inland site is not on politically, and a coastal site is not on economically." [1] Duncan Needham argues that the challenge of airport expansion at Maplin provides direct parallels with airport expansion following the 2006 Department of Transport strategy and debates by policy makers in the subsequent UK governments regarding a proposed third runway at Heathrow. [13]
In 2002 a Department for Transport study identified a site at Cliffe on the Hoo Peninsula in north Kent as the leading contender among potential sites for a new airport for London. [14] The proposal was for up to four runways arranged in two east-west close parallel pairs, with a possible fifth runway on a different alignment, which might be used only at night and in particular weather conditions. [15] In December 2003 the government decided against the Cliffe proposal on the grounds that the costs of a coastal site were too high, and there was a significant risk that the airport would not be well used. [16]
After 2008, the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, led scoping studies for a further airport in north Kent. Suggestions included the development of a major International hub at Cliffe which would link in with the HS1 line through Kent to St Pancras.
The Cameron government was committed to a full Aviation Review and a scoping study was released in March 2011.
The "Marinair" proposal was put forward in the 1990s, [17] in which an airport would be built on an offshore artificial island in the Thames estuary, north east of the Isle of Sheppey. [15] When the proposal was put forward again in the government's 2002 consultation, it was rejected on the grounds of insufficient information and prohibitive expense. [16] The Marinair plans had been developed in the years prior to 1990 by Covell Matthews Partnership, and a Thames Estuary Airport Company Ltd established to manage the project, under the direction of A. E. T. Matthews, Managing Director.
The Isle of Sheppey proposal was revived in 2008 by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, located a little further to the east towards the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. The deputy mayor, Kit Malthouse, supported a Thames estuary airport since before taking office. [18] In November 2008 the mayor appointed Doug Oakervee (executive chair of Crossrail) to lead the Greater London Authority's preliminary feasibility study [19] which determined in October 2009 that there is "no logical constraint" to the plan. [20]
The proposal has acquired the popular nickname of "Boris Island", and is frequently referred to as such in the press. [21] [22] [23] A new iteration of the proposal named the London Britannia Airport was unveiled in November 2013. [24] It was a proposed six-runway airport to be built on an artificial island, [25] comparable to a similar approach taken with Hong Kong International Airport. [26] The scheme was proposed by Testrad (Thames Estuary Research and Development), initially an agency formed by Johnson but now also involving other partners, and was rejected by the airport commission in January 2014 in favour of continued upgrades to Heathrow. This proposal would cost £47.3 billion and would mean the closure of Heathrow Airport. [27]
Proponents argue the scheme's big advantage is that it would avoid flying over densely populated areas and the noise pollution and other problems that causes. Some local councils and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds oppose the plan, [28] as do current London airports. [29] Critics suggest the scheme is impractical and too expensive; Terry Farrell compared it to grandiose and unrealistic projects devised by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. [30]
In early 2014 the UK Airports Commission, in its interim report, did not recommend the London Britannia proposal for further analysis. [31]
The Thames Hub Airport (like Shivering Sands, nicknamed "Boris Island" after Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London [32] ) is a proposal for a 4-runway hub airport to be located on the Isle of Grain in Kent. The airport was part of the Thames Hub integrated infrastructure development developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2 November 2011. [33] [34] Thames Hub combines rail, freight logistics, aviation, energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the country.
The airport would be built on a platform straddling the land and sea off the Isle of Grain on the Hoo Peninsula. It would be opened in 2029 with an initial handling capacity of 110 million passengers per annum. [35] It would be connected to London by a short spur off HS1 with a journey time of 26 minutes.
The site was selected for its proximity to London – at 34 miles (55 km) from the centre and close proximity to HS1, the airport could be reached in 26 minutes by high-speed rail. The proposal to build the airport on a platform, like those at Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong and New Doha International Airport in Qatar, would allow flights to take off and land over water, significantly reducing noise impacts and enabling the airport to operate 24 hours a day.
The airport would accommodate long-haul airline schedules and growing demand in the Asian market. Thus it would reassert London's geographical advantage as the stop-off point between North America and Eurasia, which is being eroded by a combination of new long-range aircraft and the emergence of networks centred on a global hub, such as Dubai.
The Thames Hub Airport proposal was submitted to the UK's Airports Commission by Foster+Partners in July 2013 as a proposed solution to the question of how the UK can maintain its global hub status. The future remained unclear as the option was not on the Commission's original short list, but was still considered. It was finally rejected on grounds of cost (possibly as high as £100 billion) and environmental damage by the Airports Commission in an announcement made on 2 September 2014, leaving Gatwick and Heathrow as the remaining options.
Many advantages have been claimed for an airport in the Thames estuary, particularly as a replacement for Heathrow: [15] [18] [36]
A number of disadvantages to an airport in the Thames estuary have been pointed out: [15] [16]
Heathrow Airport, called London Airport until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow, is the main international airport serving London, the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system. The airport is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings, owned mostly by Ferrovial and Qatar Investment Authority and CDPQ. In 2022, it was the second-busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the busiest airport in Europe in 2023. It is also the airport with the world's most international connections as of 2023.
London Stansted Airport is the tertiary international airport serving London, England. It is located near Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, 42 mi (68 km) northeast of Central London.
London Gatwick, also known as Gatwick Airport, is the secondary international airport serving London, England, United Kingdom. It is located near Crawley, West Sussex, England 29.5 miles (47.5 km) south of Central London. In 2022, Gatwick was the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after Heathrow Airport, and was the 8th-busiest in Europe by total passenger traffic. It covers a total area of 674 hectares.
Heathrow Airport Holdings is the United Kingdom-based operator of Heathrow Airport. The company also operated Gatwick Airport, Stansted Airport, Edinburgh Airport and several other UK airports, but was forced by the Competition Commission to sell them in order to break up a monopoly. It was formed by the privatisation of the British Airports Authority as BAA plc as part of Margaret Thatcher's moves to privatise government-owned assets, and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
London has an extensive and developed transport network which includes both public and private services. Journeys made by public transport systems account for 37% of London's journeys while private services accounted for 36% of journeys, walking 24% and cycling 2%,according to numbers from 2017. London's public transport network serves as the central hub for the United Kingdom in rail, air and road transport.
Sir Colin Douglas Buchanan CBE was a Scottish town planner. He became Britain's most famous transport planner following the publication of Traffic in Towns in 1963, which presented a comprehensive view of the issues surrounding the growth of personal car ownership and urban traffic in the UK.
The expansion of Heathrow Airport is a series of proposals to add to the runways at London's busiest airport beyond its two long runways which are intensively used to serve four terminals and a large cargo operation. The plans are those presented by Heathrow Airport Holdings and an independent proposal by Heathrow Hub with the main object of increasing capacity.
In its early years what is now Heathrow Airport was the Great West Aerodrome, sometimes known as Heathrow Aerodrome.
Heathwick is an informal name for a 2011 proposal to create a high-speed rail link between London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports, in effect to combine them into a single aviation travel hub. Proponents argue this would balance their capacity and so reduce the need to add more runways to Heathrow, or more airports in the south-east of England. In 2018 the similar project HS4Air was proposed.
The Thames Hub is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development that combines rail, intermodal freight logistics, aviation, tidal renewable energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the UK. It was developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched by Lord Foster at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2 November 2011.
The metropolitan area of London, England, United Kingdom, is served by six international airports and several smaller airports. Together, these airports constitute the busiest airport system in the world by passenger numbers and the second-busiest by aircraft movements. In 2018, the six airports handled a total of 177,054,819 passengers. The London airports handle over 60% of all the UK's air traffic. The airports serve a total of 14 domestic destinations and 396 international destinations.
The Airports Commission was an independent commission established in September 2012 by the Government of the United Kingdom to consider how the UK could "maintain its status as an international hub for aviation and immediate actions to improve the use of existing runway capacity in the next 5 years". Alongside the proposal to build HS2, the question of how to make best use of and expand airport capacity had become the UK's most significant infrastructure issue over the preceding few years.
Thames Hub Airport was a proposed platform-based hub airport located on the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary in Kent, whose development has been led by the architect Lord Foster. The idea for the airport was originally included within the Thames Hub integrated infrastructure vision, and the idea of some kind of airport in the Thames Estuary has been discussed since the 1970s.
Heathrow Hub is an independent proposal to expand capacity at London's Heathrow Airport, put forward by Jock Lowe, a former Concorde pilot, and Mark Bostock, an ex-director at Arup Group.
The expansion of Gatwick Airport has involved several proposals aimed at increasing airport capacity in south east England and relieving congestion at the main hub airport Heathrow.
Since the 1950s, London's primary passenger airport has been at Heathrow, with a second one at Gatwick. London's third airport may refer to:
The Roskill Commission was a UK Government Commission charged with looking into finding a site for a new airport for London. Chaired by High Court judge Eustace Roskill, it sat from 1968 to 1970 and published its report in January 1971.
HS4Air is a proposal for a 140-kilometre (87 mi) high-speed railway line in the United Kingdom, put forward in 2018 by a British engineering consultancy, Expedition Engineering.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)