Last year I made two longish-haul journeys for the Gazette to fast-growing economies of interest to UK law firms. Neither of my destinations – Bogota and Erbil – had a direct flight from London. The trips involved spending time (and money) in Amsterdam, Madrid and Vienna.

Even more graphically than Heathrow’s barely contained chaos at peak time, the lack of direct connections to important emerging markets brought home Britain’s chronic failure to get to grips with air transport policy.

Incredibly, governments have dithered over airport expansion since 1974, when Harold Wilson’s incoming administration cancelled the planned 24-hour airport on the Essex coast at Maplin. That’s nearly four decades. The tradition continued through the last election, when none of the major parties dared support a third runway at Heathrow – itself only a feeble last-minute lash-up response to a capacity crisis.

For those new to the debate, or who think this is a south-east-centric whinge, I’m not talking about a few business-class executives having to change planes but a threat to the national economy.

Heathrow – currently being operated at an intensity unique in the world – is the UK’s only hub airport. Hub airports don’t generate much direct wealth, but by attracting transfer passengers they make viable direct routes to destinations that might not be viable on their own. This is especially important when connecting with emerging markets.

Current destinations from London that would be threatened by a decline in feed-in passengers include Mexico City, Beirut, Seattle, Chennai, Riyadh, Ottawa and Dhaka. Direct routes are also good for business for direct investment. A company in, say, Wuhan planning to open a European office is much more likely to pick a location linked by a direct flight than in an outlying city.

In a hard-hitting report this month the House of Commons Transport Committee points out: ‘The UK’s hub airport is of great importance to all the regions of the UK. It plays a unique role in connecting the country to the rest of the world – a role that could not be adequately fulfilled by a non-hub airport. It is imperative that the UK maintains its status as an international aviation hub.’

So, how to go about it? My heart pulls me to the London mayor’s ‘Boris Island’ scheme for a new Thames estuary airport, but my head tells me it is too expensive and in the wrong place. Point-to-point services east of London would be better served by better use of spare capacity at Stansted and the excellent runway at Manston in north-east Kent.

The transport committee comes out in favour of a bold but practical compromise. The idea, floated last year by Policy Exchange thinktank, is to build four new runways, in parallel pairs, to the west of Heathrow’s current site. This would use all existing terminals except Terminal 4, as well as Heathrow’s belatedly installed rail links. Steeper approaches and new airliner technology would mean less noise impact than today, though the inhabitants of Windsor Castle might suffer.

It looks an excellent plan; let’s get on with it. Now.

No doubt someone will comment that public money would be better spent on preserving legal aid than building new airports. Fair enough, but both represent only tiny slices of public expenditure. And – to channel the late Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 homily on the good Samaritan – where do we think tax revenues to pay for a decent legal aid service will come from if the UK’s economy is not open to the world?

Michael Cross is Gazette news editor

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