ANstar

Not even govt owned airport... just need to look here in the UK

... it costs nearly 20 quid more in airport fees per trip to fly from LHR than other airports in the UK when using a staff ticket.

Jagboi

Why expensive loans? Interest rates are at historic lows, money is practically free now. It's not like 1980 at 20%.

UKtravelbear

When the Dome was built they had to spend shed loads on removing tonnes of contaminated earth from the decades of industrial work on the site. Then they has to build the basic infrastructure - utilities that were totally absent from the site plus roads etc.

Ditto with the Olympic stadium there was a mountain of fridges to remove and treat properly as well as contaminated earth then there was the cost of diverting power cables.

Now whilst the new runway won't need a lot of power (though a T6 would) there are still a lot of works needed before you lay any Tarmac.

None of the above are greenfield sites which are cheaper to develop - hence why eg house builders want to build on green field because brownfield is harder and more expensive.

Worcester

Ah, if you don't wish to be disillusioned don't read on.

If a company makes a profit in the UK they will be taxed at 20%.
If though the company has debts, the interest on the debt is tax deductible to the UK company.
Now due to double tax treaties most income is only taxed once.

Therefore if you load up a UK company with lots of high interest debt through a financing company based in a country with low tax on interest, you can extract what could have been profit without paying as much tax.

This is a favorite sort of scheme for large companies with a very constant income stream.

Behindthecurtain

ROFLMFAO. Is that before or after the knock it down and rebuild it after the first few failures

AA_EXP09

Even for HK, they are budgeting about 40% less for their 3rd runway (HKD 141.5 billion)

TravellingSalesman

Yes, but as we all know LHR is such a desirable airport, so that's just market forces, no?

bernardd

There are a couple of things that look strange in these images:

http://your.heathrow.com/takingbrita...runway-images/

One is that image no. 2 shows T5B quite different to nos. 8-10, actually quite a bit shorter than it is today.

Despite that, they all seem to consistently show plenty of space for parking, or should that be bussing gates east of T5C. And what looks like a line of bussing gates south of the new terminal, just north of the current northerly runway. Are they seriously thinking of spending so much and STILL using buses?

Overall though the arguments about the cost of money etc. etc. all sound specious to me. This is an outrageous cost driven by stupid bug City land prices. For heavens sake, in an era of effective telecommunications, why do we still feel the need to cluster together and reward ourselves by continually and artificially inflating the price of land? And why on earth did the UK regulators ever allow IAG to get near 60% of the Heathrow slots?

Time for the elected representatives to step back and think this through again in my opinion - thankfully I no longer have to foot the bill for any of this nonsense.

muishkin

$26 billion for a new runway? What is the runway made of? Gold? Either you guys have too much taxes or lot of people are committing highway robbery.

For comparison Atlanta's "new" runway, which had to built over I-285, only cost $1.2 billion.

strichener

In comparison to SE England, land south of Atlanta is almost free.

muishkin

Surely you exaggerate. I see lots of green space and reservoirs west of Heathrow that you can stick a runway on.

strichener

Go and try buy some of it. You will soon see.

muishkin

Why wasn't it reserved for Heathrow before? Who own the reservoirs?

Atlanta's expansion didn't involve buying much of any land.

callum9999

No they aren't exaggerating.

And while many of you feel like you're comparing like with like, you aren't even close. Comparing Heathrow with Atlanta or Berlin has no more merit than me comparing it with repaving my driveway. Them all being airports doesn't make the construction remotely comparable - hence the wildly different prices.

BA Humbug

Paving it with gold would likely not cost much more than paving it with concrete, since the actual paving of the top material does not cost that much anyway. You'll still need layers of sub-base and concrete to maintain the structural integrity of the runway. But you'll find that you'll need to replace them every once in a while when the skid mark buildup gets too much and they need to paint/clean it

Aside from the issue of land ownership costs, there's also a matter of zoning. You can't literally stick a runway wherever it fits.

For instance, once you've re-zoned it, you've got to study the ground composition, then remediate/reinforce the site and prep them for work. All land is different, and all governments have different rules governing design (British Standard, ASCE in the US, not sure about Germany but probably some form of EC.)

As I've said before, building something is never as easy as it looks This isn't a shelf in your garage or a shed in your backyard -- precautions have to be taken and everything needs to be (over)designed, because the public is expected to (ab)use it.

The huge sums everyone constantly harps on about is represented by the runway, but it includes so much more -- infrastructure, transport systems, ancillary works, etc.