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Travel Desk Heathrow airport’s capacity reached a record of 69.4m passengers in 2011, increasing 5.5 per cent compared with 2010. The airport is at 99.2pc capacit with 476,197 flights in 2011, when the annual limit is 480,000. Last month was the busiest with December the busiest in 2011. BAA, owner of Heathrow, is concerned about the constraints on capacity, damaging the British economy.
Colin Mathews, BAA chief executive, showed his concern over Heathrow’s effectiveness compared to the other European airports like Paris and Frankfurt, which have almost double the flights to China’s biggest three cities than London. Capacity constraints also mean airlines cannot fly to principal emerging-market destinations, such as Jakarta and Guangzhou, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.
Colin Matthews emphasised the key function of Heathrow airport, which is “central to developing our trade links with fast-growing emerging markets”. Although, another £50bn hub airport has been proposed in the South East, in order to solve the capacity problem, BAA chief executive pointed out that it “may take decades to build”.
The Government has given the green light to the £33bn high-speed rail network link, the HS2, which will connect London and the north of the country. However, the proposal of building a third runway at Heathrow airport has been dismissed.
BAA also owns Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stansted airports.
Reporting by Paula Planelles Manzanaro
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