MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Heathrow plans 'vital for economy' said CEO operator BAA

Heathrow is vital to the well-being of Britain, an air chief will tell a conference in London.

The west London airport needs a third runway and downgrading it in any way will harm the UK's economy, Colin Matthews, chief executive of airport operator BAA will argue. Speaking at an aviation conference, Mr Matthews will say that it is crucial that Britain faces up to the complex and fundamental issues facing aviation in this country. Mr Matthews, whose company runs seven UK airports including Heathrow, will make the point that Heathrow has a unique role in Britain as the country's only global hub airport. It can provide the frequency of flights and range of destinations that are essential to keeping the UK globally competitive - and which will be all the more essential in an era when the UK workforce and its goods need to be highly skilled and mobile. Mr Matthews will say that getting rid of transfer passengers would be a fundamental, strategic error which would, in effect, reduce Heathrow to the status of a regional airport for the other European hub airports. That would harm not just London, but the rest of the country as well which depends on Heathrow to connect it to the world. He will ask: "Does anybody seriously think that if people living and working, not just in London, but in the rest of the country, were forced to go to Charles De Gaulle, or Schipol to fly to the rest of the world our economy would not suffer?" That, he will argue, is why a third runway is needed at Heathrow and why any proposal to build a hub airport in the Thames Estuary would both cost much more, be environmentally more damaging and, by resulting in the effective closure of Heathrow, mean the loss of some 72,000 direct jobs from west London. The suggestion that Heathrow should be made better before it is made bigger is a false choice, Mr Matthews will tell the conference. The debate should not be about either new facilities or new runway capacity. The UK desperately needs both, not least because in South East England there has been no major new runway since 1946.