lhrsfo

+1. His fear must be that fees will grow up which will hamper BA's operation, but permit competitors more, and more viable, slots.

Prospero

Beijing’s major expansion was completed at a reported cost of US$3.5bn - this included a third runway, a new underground rail link, and Terminal 3. Granted, it was commissioned, approved, designed, built, and opened in the space of 4 years (a timescale impossible to achieve in the UK).

£17bn is a staggering figure.

Worcester

Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one.

srbrenna

£17bn is indeed a huge number - I don't think anyone can disagree. Do we have any detail of how they arrived at this figure? Or how they can easily add billions to the previous estimate?

London Dude

He he he BAA must have been taking notice when WW brags to institutional investors that BA's dominance at LHR is a major competitive advantage because "the vast majority of business travellers want to fly into Heathrow."

nobbyclark

Exactly, for that amount of money we should get a whole new airport, if not two. £17bn for a bit of tarmac, wiring, road markings and sundries is ridiculous. Would love to see the estimates that add up to this figure.

flygod

£17Bn is staggering - and the £5Bn for road improvements even more.

See costs here for roads:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13924687

£694m for the Glasgow M74 extension: £86.5k per metre.

£155k per metre for the A3 tunnel and..... wait for it........

£250k per metre in today's money for London Dockland's Limehouse Link!

BA Humbug

I think the vast majority of the general public underestimates the true cost of infrastructure, and what goes into determining the feasibility, designing, planning, and finally the construction of it (the last part being the only part seen by the average person).

As an example, work on the midfield concourse in HKG was under design, there was a huge unforeseen problem: groundwater hydrostatic pressure uplift. The cheapest solution found was to install several hundred steel tension anchors at a <confidential> price underneath the building. Is it visible to a user of the airport? no. Is it detailed in press releases? no. Does it benefit the traveller like champagne does? no. Is it vital? yes, otherwise the floor of the concourse would bow up from under you.

The breakdown of the Heathrow north-west third runway is much more than "a bit of tarmac, wiring, road markings, and sundries". In fact, it takes up approximately ~1% of the cost. This obviously isn't final, but it gives an idea of the distribution of that kind of money:



Graphic source: https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...nal-report.pdf

kanderson1965

Add in the cost of public inquires, judicial reviews of said enquires, environmental impact reviews etc and it will add up to a bit more than the material costs.

HIDDY

Yes, costs for relocating local residents, businesses and the boggle eyed newt population will run into a few billion.

Worcester

But why can other European countries build things at a fraction of the cost

for example

yes London land values are higher and yes Labour costs are too. But I still can not begin to get my head around the huge multiple of cost.

srbrenna

Apparently the cost of a stadium goes up quite a bit when you want to seat over 80,000.

But back on topic - the graph shows the spend etc. And I'm not sure that we are necessarily more expensive. We need to compare like with like.

BA Humbug

the article you quoted explains (further down) why costs don't scale up linearly when you scale up proportion/capacity linearly

Tim1975

HAL runs a fairly efficient ship and turns a healthy operating profit. The reason they are expensive has nothing to do with that, but because they are having to service huge debts at comparatively high rates.

The huge price tag for the 3rd runway is due in large part to the cost of financing the loans needed. A state owned airport could do it much cheaper because the cost of borrowing would be lower.

Dover2Golf

My heart bleeds for Wee Willie, it's not like BA rip people off is it.

I think he should take his toys home and then go and play elsewhere with them. Let's see how he gets on moving everything to Doncaster/Sheffield. They'd be delighted to have him.