Concessions Made for Heathrow’s Third Runway Sit Sourly With IAG Boss

LHR authorities tempt government approval for a third runway by announcing a night flight ban just as IAG boss Willie Walsh calls the cost of the current runway proposal “indefensible.”

In an effort to secure government support for a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR), LHR authorities announced yesterday that they will ban flights between 11 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. local time. This move is seen as an attempt to diminish the impact that the airport’s operations will have on nearby communities.

Airport authorities say that their concession would actually exceed the flight ban suggestion given by the Airports Commission, the body tasked with examining airport expansion in the U.K. The Commission recommended that flights be banned between 11:30 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Night flights are currently prohibited at LHR between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m.

LHR chief executive John Holland-Kaye commented on the proposal on Wednesday. Contrasting the schedule offered by airport authorities with that suggested by the Airports Commission, he said that there was one issue that had not been taken into consideration by the body.

The issue, Holland-Kaye was quoted in Flightglobal as saying, was, “If you stop having flights before the ban, where do you move them to?”

While Holland-Kaye admitted that a change in timings would involve moving some flights to later time slots, he said that, “The shift is not very significant. The big prize for airlines is the new capacity.”

Despite this concession on flight timings, for Willie Walsh, the head of International Airlines Group (IAG), the body that owns LHR-based British Airways (BA), the development of a third runway still comes down to money.

Speaking yesterday at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Aviation Symposium, he told Air Transport World that the cost of the current proposal was “indefensible.”

The desperation to get a third runway, Walsh revealed, has resulted in an £18 billion ($26 billion) proposal. Only one percent of this, he said, would go toward the runway, with the rest being spent elsewhere at LHR.

Walsh was adamant he would not support what he called, “the world’s most expensive runway”.

“I will fight against it and I refuse to pay for it because the cost will be passed on to me and my customers,” he said.

[Photo: Getty Images]