British Airways (CEO Willie Wash) and BAA (CEO Colin Matthews) have called for the construction of a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport. This statement came after a business group, London’s First, has called for “drastic action to end the problems of “Heathrow hassle“”. The group has called for scrapping of some flights at peak time (read here).
From Forbes –
“ BA chief executive Willie
Walsh told a transport conference in London that the London hub needed
a short extra runway and mixed-mode operation on its existing two
runways, which would create more take-off and landing space.”
“ Walsh said the absence of
spare runway capacity had caused Heathrow’s global network to shrink
from 227 destinations in 1990 to 180 today. ‘This is a cycle of decline
that must be reversed,’ he said.”
I am little worried about more construction at the airport for the following possible reasons (you might agree with one or two of them) –
- A patch to a bigger problem – The problem at Heathrow is capacity constraints, not just at the runway level but at Gates, etc. I think the best alternative would be to make another airport?
- Bad Record – Terminal 4 has caused us all to believe that expansions can result in chaos!!!
- Environmental Impact – Though I do not consider myself an environmentalist, but still I feel this should be studied, esp. with all the wide body planes at Heathrow.
..was just passing by.. good work