Business chiefs are pushing for more long-haul flights out of Stansted to support exports and help the area’s high-growth industries.
A two-hour journey time to Heathrow to catch flights to destinations such as New York, San Francisco or Beijing puts companies off setting up in the area, they argue.
International drugs and biotechnology companies with a local presence include GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen and Genzyme.
Cambridge and Tech City in East London are hubs for technology companies.
The London Stansted Cambridge Consortium, a lobby group backed by local councils and the Corporation of London, said the area contributed 12% of gross value added to the UK economy, a figure that would rise as London developed to the east.
The consortium has asked the government’s Airports Commission to support Stansted’s plans to introduce long-haul flights and double capacity to 35 million passengers a year.
This would create 3,800 jobs by 2020 and double gross value added generated to £1.6 billion by 2030, it said.
Jeanette Walker, project director at the Cambridge biomedical campus, which houses more than 200 organisations and thousands of staff, said companies wanted links not only to biomedical communities in San Francisco, Boston and New Jersey, but to Seoul, Singapore and China.
“Even though they’re based in Cambridge, these [companies] have global markets or global collaborators,” she told the Financial Times.