Heathrow Airport will try for the third time to get permission to build a Third Runway. It is expected to submit an application in the summer after the Government said this week that it would support a new runway in principle.

Plans for a third runway were first put forward in 2003. After one of the longest and most high-profile campaigns in British history the new Conservative-led coalition Government dropped the proposal in 2010. But a few years later it came back.  In 2020 it was once again abandoned, as a result of another high-profile campaign and the coming of Covid.Covid hit Heathrow hard. It lost millions of pounds each week. But it has now recovered. Last year it saw a record number of passengers. Flight numbers came close to their annual cap of 480.000.

A third runway would increase flight numbers to over 700,000 a year. There would be climate, noise and community impacts. At least 800 homes would need to be demolished.  It is likely that over 1 million people would be impacted by noise from Heathrow (though this almost certainly will be mitigated by building periods of respite for each community into the proposals). And it would produce carbon emissions.

Heathrow has changed over the past 20 years. Its failure to get a third runway in 2010 was a wake-up call. It realized it had to engage with communities in a more meaningful way and to produce convincing proposals to tackle noise and emissions.

It will be some years before Heathrow will know if it can start to build its third runway. Its plans need to go out for public consultation, then to a Public Inquiry, and to get final approval from the Government.

John Stewart’s weblog  4 February 2025