London City Airport has been granted planning permission for expansion, which will help the capital airport to handle 6.5 million passengers annually within the next nine years. Last year was the busiest at London City, with more than 4.3 million passengers handled.
The City Airport Development Programme (CADP) is a privately funded investment of £344 million which includes plans for a parallel taxiway, passenger terminal extension and seven new aircraft stands.
Expanding London City Airport, which saw an 18.4 percent increase in passenger numbers in 2015 offers a light at the end of the tunnel, following the uncertainty in the aviation industry of the Brexit referendum vote. This project will create 1,600 jobs within the airport, and add more than £700 million to the UK economy. It is expected that up to 500 construction jobs will be created as companies across the UK are able to bid for contracts worth £294 million.
A number of investments will be made in transport links around the airport. This will include funding the cost of additional Docklands Light Railway rolling stock – amounting to £2.6 million – as well as improving walking and cycling routes to the airport.
Of the project, London City Airport’s CEO Declan Collier said: “Expansion at London City Airport will create more than 2000 new jobs in East London, add much-needed aviation capacity in the South East, and generate an additional £750 million per year for the UK economy… Today the Government has sent a strong message that London and the UK are very much open for business. I welcome the decision and look forward to delivering new airport capacity for the South East by 2019.”
An Oxford Economics study recently found that five percent of all UK exports to key European markets are associated with London City Airport trips, which has a monetary value of £11 billion of UK trade exports. More than half of the passengers at the airport use it for business travel, and the Global Business Travel Association estimates a growth of six percent in the £26 billion UK business travel market in 2016.
British Airways have significantly increased their services at London City Airport for the summer season. In June, the carrier launched four time weekly flights to Alicante, as well as a three times daily service to Berlin. When added to the three times daily flights to Hamburg launched in May, BA now operates more than 70 direct flights to Germany a week. This is set to be the carrier’s busiest summer ever at London City, operating over half of all flights at the airport.
London City is once again on a growth trajectory after its offer stalled towards the end of the last decade. Having grown capacity to a high of 3.2 million departure seats in 2008, its scheduled capacity declined in the subsequent three years as the airport’s higher propensity for business traffic meant it felt the force of the economic slowdown more heavily than most others.
However, capacity growth returned in 2012 and the airport surpassed its 2008 record last year, with a predicted annual growth of 5.1 percent in 2016, based on published schedules, pushing this number up to almost 3.5 million departure seats.
With the expansion going ahead at London City, an airport which has increased passenger numbers significantly in the last five years, it brings to light the ongoing issue of expansions at the other airports in London. Talks of an expansion at either the UK’s hub airport of Heathrow, or at Gatwick continues on. Prime Minister Theresa May’s administration is due to decide whether to build a new runway at one of the airports after the summer recess.
Should Heathrow be granted permission to build a new runway, it has been estimated that the project would cost around £18.6 billion - £4 billion higher than Heathrow’s own estimate. At the moment, the airport is operating at 99 percent capacity. If Gatwick is chosen, the new runway would allow the airport to handle more capacity than Heathrow currently does to 87 million annual passengers. This project is estimated to cost around £9.3 billion, which is £2 billion higher than the airport’s estimate. A deadline of 2030 has been given to have a new runway built at either airport.
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