Heathrow bosses have backed reported comments by London mayor Boris Johnson concerning the Government’s opposition to building new runways. The Mayor also attacked the rising levels of aviation taxes labelling it a “disgrace”.
Johnson labelled the Government’s unwillingness to discuss any new capacity in the South East as “crazy”. Speaking at a people’s Question Time event on Tuesday, he warned that a lack of new runways is hindering London’s long term competitiveness, whilst increasing capacity could “deliver growth and jobs for a long time to come.”
Johnson also criticised the spiralling cost of aviation taxation, saying: “I think it is an absolute disgrace that you are seeing a kind of bourgeois repression of people’s ability to take holidays and I think it is a matter of social justice that we look at aviation capacity in this country.”
His comments came as figures from the Airports Council International showed that Heathrow has slipped from second to fourth busiest airport worldwide by passenger numbers, behind Atlanta, Beijing and Chicago O’Hare.
The London airport’s policy and political relations director Nigel Milton said: “Heathrow’s position in the global rankings shows a worrying trend and is a direct consequence of the airport being unable to develop new routes.
“We believe that London needs more airport capacity to strengthen the trading links on which future economic growth depends, and we welcome the Mayor’s comments.”
An extraordinary coalition of travel industry firms is demanding the government do not raise APD any further when it announces plans to reform the text in next week’s budget. The Fair Tax on Flying campaign is being backed by Travel Weekly. This week Caribbean leaders labelled the tax ‘discriminatory’ as they lobbied minister in Brussells.
Photograph by John Hemming. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.