Heathrow's third runway: will the plan ever take off?

Here we go again, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. Last week, Heathrow Airport unveiled its latest expansion plans. Labour first backed the third runway in 2009, six years after it had been proposed in a White Paper, and the Tories "voted it through Parliament in 2018".

Legal challenges, and then reduced passenger numbers during the pandemic, "applied the brakes" to the project; but now the operator is back with detailed plans, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has signalled strong support for the proposals – which would include a £12 billion terminal, and a £21 billion, 3,500-metre runway built over a diverted section of the M25 at the northwest of the airport.

The plans drew a muted public response, said Andrew Gilligan in The i Paper. That's not because campaigners are now relaxed about "increases in noise and pollution for up to 10 million people", rises in CO2 emissions, or the demolition of at least 700 homes. No, it's because "informed people" on all sides reckon the proposals are a "fantasy".

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Maybe so, but Reeves is taking them very seriously, said the Daily Mail. She has said the runway is "essential" to her plan for growth, and wants it to be operational within a decade. We must hope she gets her way. Britain's failure to expand Heathrow is a national "humiliation": in the 22 years that we've been "huffing and puffing" over this runway, China has built 100 airports.

The benefits of expansion are clear, said The Times: it would allow an extra 276,000 flights a year; and, according to Reeves, could create 100,000 jobs. Granted, there would be costs. But Heathrow is one of the world's busiest two-runway airport and needs a third to compete with other hubs. "Building it must be a national priority."

"Yet there are good reasons Britain has been failing to build this landing strip," said Alistair Osborne in the same paper, and many questions about these latest plans remain unanswered. Can an already debt-laden Heathrow afford the project? Who'd pay for the public transport upgrades required to ferry 66 million extra passengers a year to and from the airport? Is it really feasible, as Heathrow's boss claims, to divert the M25 into a tunnel without causing huge disruptions?

And is this expansion worth it, "when for a total £8 billion, you could add capacity for 100 million passengers at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City and Manchester, with far less hassle"? Maybe these issues can be overcome, and maybe official "net zero" targets won't scupper the proposal either. But for now, the third runway still "looks a long way from takeoff."