Dubai airport’s former operations chief is to join Heathrow as the London hub faced fresh criticism over its third runway plans.
Chris Garton is moving to the west London airport as chief operations officer in the spring.
He is currently asset management director at Associated British Ports but previously spent nine years at the Middle East airport as passenger numbers almost trebled from 30 million to 86 million.
Garton’s career also included a period working at Gatwick.
He succeeds interim chief operating officer Derek Provan, who is moving to become managing director of Glasgow airport and chief executive of owner AGS Airports.
Heathrow said: “Chris is one of the very few people in the world with experience of successfully running a large and constrained hub airport and Heathrow is delighted to have been able to secure a leader of his calibre.”
The appointment came as Heathrow was accused of failing to address safety issues in new evidence submitted to the Commons Transport Select Committee.
The claim came from Heathrow Hub, which is putting forward an alternative scheme to expand the airport by extending the existing northern runway.
Heathrow Hub, led by former Concorde pilot Jock Lowe, believes a new third runway is likely to require up to a third of flights to cross in the sky in order to reach the right north or south runway, creating more noise and complex new flightpaths across London.
The requirements of aircraft taxiing from the southern runway to the new northern runway without interrupting operations on the middle runway will cause major limitations, according to Heathrow Hub.
“Operations on the middle runway will likely be constrained, as aircraft taking off will not be able to turn left or right without crossing the other runways,” it added.
Heathrow revised its scheme last week to cut costs by £2.5 billion with a plan for a shortened third runway and moving the M25 motorway 150 metres to the west in a tunnel.
The fresh proposals are being put forward in a ten-week public consultation running until March 28.