Thames Hub Airport (Boris Island) - What's Wrong in 10 Cs

There is nothing new with the idea of an airport somewhere in the Thames estuary, indeed the initial idea of using Maplin Sands has been around since the 60s. As recently as 2003, the option to build an airport at Cliffe has been put forward and equally rapidly rejected.

The most recent proposal for an airport on the edge of the Isle of Grain has been promulgated by the architect Lord Foster. As someone who trained in architecture I have immense respect for Lord Foster, who has produced some of the most iconic designs across a range of transport and other disciplines -- from road bridges (Millau Viaduct, France) to railway stations (Canary Wharf, proposed Florence high-speed station) to buses and yachts, and of course airports, including our own Stansted Airport, Hong Kong's Chep Lap Kok airport, which was also built on partially reclaimed land, and Terminal 3 at Beijing's capital airport, which will no doubt shortly become the largest airport in the world.

Having spent nearly 10 years running one of the U.K.'s most authoritative sources on direct flight routes, I have seen airports flourish and flounder across the world. Whilst my natural urge to see exciting projects get built makes me relish the prospect of such an adventurous scheme, common sense and logic show that it is clearly a terribly bad idea for the following reasons:

1) Compulsory purchase

First and foremost, in order for this project to have any prospect of working, Heathrow Airport must be closed. If Heathrow stays open, there is no business case to move half the routes over to a Thames estuary airport.

For better or worse, the UK has pursued a policy of private airlines and private airports since the 1980s, and Heathrow's owners BAA are currently owned by the Spanish group Ferrovial. Purchase of Heathrow would have to be secured long before construction of any new airport started -- otherwise there would be a huge risk that Heathrow would just stay open, splitting the hubbing operations between the two – something that might aswell just be done by extending Gatwick Airport (see below).

Therefore, any investment proposition has to take into account this huge upfront cost before a single scoop of mud is dredged. Where other global cities have closed airports to open up new ones on a larger site, they have invariably been municipally or nationally owned. There is simply no precedent for a compulsory purchase of this size.

In reality, such a move could only result in a protracted court battle -- even if the government tried to pass a bill to re-nationalise the foreign owned BAA, they would still expect a European court battle. Compulsory purchase is traditionally used to enable large-scale infrastructure projects to proceed without individual properties getting in the way. There is no airspace requirement for Heathrow to close in order for an airport the other side of London to open (although the Dutch might have issues with it), so the compulsory purchase order would merely be for this new larger entrant into the market to eradicate its smaller competitor.

In any other industry, this would be deemed a predatory practice -- why would a court determine differently for a new airport?

2) Customers

Although the ultimate customers of an airport are obviously the passengers who use it, the direct customers are the airlines with whom they fly. So far, only one airline has come forward to express any interest in his new airport, and that is the regional carrier Flybe. Considering that most of Flybe's routes are from other UK airports outside London, it is somewhat bizarre that they should choose to back this airport (see blog article on this). British Airways have made it very clear that they would not choose to move to this airport, even if it gave them significantly more room for expansion, and there has been no interest shown from any other major airline.

With the merger between British Airways and BMI, it is likely that a number of duplicated routes will have their frequency reduced, freeing up extra slots to serve emerging markets.

Equally importantly, an increasingly large proportion of flights from London are now taken on low-cost airlines, particularly easyJet and Ryanair. Low-cost airlines operate point to point services, and have no interest whatsoever in a massively expensive hub airport. Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has been particularly critical of the Thames airport plans, suggesting instead that it would be far cheaper to build one new runway each at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.

3) Competition

No city in the world has ever undertaken such a massive airport relocation project. Where large new airports have been built, there are usually two scenarios -- either a heavily constrained airport is closed and a larger replacement is built -- e.g. Denver Airport, Hong Kong, Munich; or a new airport is built, and the original airport remains open, as has generally happened in Asia --Taipei, Seoul, Shanghai Pudong, Tokyo Narita, etc.

It is virtually unheard of for a new airport to open in the place of more than one existing one, with the sole exception of the new airport in Berlin, which opens in June this year. However, Berlin has a unique set of historical circumstances which resulted in the development of the heavily constrained Tempelhof and Tegel airports.

London on the other hand has up to 12 airports which could claim the London tag. In addition to Heathrow are Gatwick, Stansted, London City and Luton, with Southend Airport also due to open a new terminal in April.

Slightly further afield, Oxford has recently rebranded itself as a London airport, whereas Manston has previously called itself London Kent Manston, Lydd calls itself London Ashford, and Birmingham wishes to take advantage of the new HS2 rail service to attract passengers away from London, who would also pass nearby Coventry airport on the way up there. Meanwhile RAF Northolt may also be sold!

It simply isn't accurate to describe the London flights market as being full. There is plenty of competition between these airports to attract business, which is increasingly moving towards the no-frills model. Some of these airports are obviously very small, but between them they all add up to make the world's largest flights market by some considerable margin.

To close Heathrow in order to improve the business case of a Thames estuary airport begs the question - what about Gatwick, which would still be much closer to central London than the new airport? Wouldn't that make it considerably attractive to some network airlines?

What about London City? Would both these airports need to be closed to boost the case for the new airport? Would Gatwick not also make a complaint that the planning restriction which bars it from building a new runway before 2019 is particularly onerous, when the environmental impact of that development is compared against the huge environmental impact of the new airport.

4) Constraints

The main selling point of a new Thames Hub is that it will provide virtually unlimited capacity for decades ahead in London and the south-east. However, even this claim is misleading.

This airport would not have virtually unlimited space to lay as many runways as it wished, in a fashion big American hub airports like Denver or Dallas Fort Worth. Instead, it would most probably be constrained to having two sets of parallel runways with a terminal complex in between. Unlike existing land-based airports that use this format, such as Paris Charles de Gaulle and Atlanta, a Thames Hub airport would have to build its terminals on reclaimed land or on a completely new, standalone Island.

This would mean that before any terminal structure could be erected, the cost of this foundation would be much higher than an equivalent land based airport. It would be likely that the amount of space available would be the minimum amount needed to keep the outer runways sufficiently separate to allow parallel takeoff and landing manoeuvres (wide spaced). There would also still need to be space for cargo terminals and for maintenance hangars. In reality, the terminal area might not be much larger than the current area between the runways at Heathrow, although it might be better organised.

Realistically, such a space might handle perhaps 80-100 million passengers per year, but it is doubtful that the claimed 150 million passengers could be handled, and indeed no airport has ever yet been planned to handle this figure. As such capacity still have to cater for the existing 65-70 million passengers per year from Heathrow, the actual gain is very small. Adding a second runway at Gatwick Airport on the other hand, with a midfield terminal complex, should be able to add capacity for an additional 30-40 million passengers on top of current capacity, without going to the expense of a new island airport.

If, on the other hand, the new airport was to expand beyond such a central terminal area, even more land would then need to be reclaimed in order to do this, and a completely separate terminal complex would have to be built, with associated transport links. This would detract from the very aim of having a single hub, and it would result in a massive extra cost.

So whichever way it is built, the new airport is bound to be constrained in some way. The idea that Flybe in particular with their much smaller aircraft taking up valuable apron space would be welcomed with open arms is somewhat ambitious to say the least.

5) Cost

This is the most obvious concern, but it needs to be set in the context of the other issues in order to be fully understood.

Foster has said that he has some interested investors for this scheme, but it would be hard to imagine how they would actually get a return. The outline figure for this airport is anywhere between £20 and £50 billion -  an investment which would take decades if not centuries to pay back.

Whilst a new island airport would no doubt be technically possible, it comes with enormous financial risk because of the engineering challenges of building in such a location. Just because it has been done before does not mean that it would work on a commercial basis in the UK.

Japan has built three offshore airports (Osaka Kansai, Nagoya Chubu Centrair and Kobe). Kansai airport in particular literally 'moved mountains' to be built, and in the process it created its own debt mountain. The effective subsidy to cover construction costs of Kobe Airport, which cost around £6 billion to build and handles less than 3 million passengers per year is nearly £100 per passenger. By contrast, Leeds Bradford Airport handles a similar volume of flights, and was sold in 2007 for just £146 million. None of these Japanese airports have been built using private funds.

Japan and also Hong Kong have also built  these airports out of necessity (with the exception of Kobe, which is in easy range of Kansai Airport) -- there simply weren't other locations with sufficiently large areas of flat land available. London has numerous airport sites which can take a lot of the load, and although it would present a number of political challenges, a third runway at Heathrow would be considerably cheaper than a new airport, if a super-hub really is needed.

Whereas an airport built using public funds can be justified using the wider benefits it brings to the city and region it serves, any airport developed using private funds must pay for itself based on the return on that investment alone. As Heathrow would have to be acquired to make this airport viable, the first 65 million passengers a year worth of capacity would merely be replacing what is already there, rather than bringing in any new passengers.

London is already at a disadvantage compared to other hub airports, as passengers travelling to or from the UK are dis-incentivised to take flights, and particularly long haul flights because of the high levels of Air Passenger Duty (APD). This, coupled with the extra passenger service charge such an airport would have to levy would give airlines are massive disincentive to add new routes to London. It would also be likely that, given extensive opposition to any new airport development from environmental groups, the government of the time would be under massive pressure to increase flight taxes further, rather than to reduce them. This combined pressure would result in the new airport replacing a capacity disadvantage at Heathrow with a huge cost disadvantage, further weakening its ability to generate a return.

Even if private backers were to genuinely step forward and put money on the table, there would still be two huge additional costs to the government. Firstly, in the event of cost over-runs, there is every chance the government would need to step in with a bailout anyway – a precedent has already been set here with the Channel Tunnel. Secondly, an airport on its own is no good without transport links, and even if road access might be provided by private toll motorway, it is likely that the government would need to chip in to fund rail links.

Lord Foster has proposed that three problems could be solved in one by combining an additional Thames crossing which would also serve the airport with a barrage which could provide both tidal power and flood protection. However, this proposal has not been developed in any great detail -- just because a scheme could be built to combine the three functions does not mean that the best place for each of them is at any one particular point.

6) Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions

The basis for such a large new airport is the assumption that the airline industry will carry on growing on an almost exponential basis. This seems highly unlikely, considering the large number of challenges the industry faces.

Not least is the commitment successive governments have made to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Whereas high-speed trains can at least theoretically run on carbon free renewable energy, no such alternative fuel exists for aircraft, and nor is it likely to exist in the near future. Whilst next-generation aircraft will continue to bring emissions per passenger down, this is pointless if it is set against relentless growth in the industry.

Even if there is still a trend towards people living longer and having more leisure time, this is still more likely to be spent travelling to destinations which can be served by low-cost airlines, or even on long-haul flights from Gatwick or other airports, without needing the intensity of a Thames hub. High taxes are also reducing levels of demand for flights from, within and to the UK.

7) China and India

Meanwhile, whilst the Internet does enable businesses to reach new markets, new communications methods are also cutting out the need for some business journeys, and this technology is developing at an incredibly rapid pace.

India and China, and to a lesser extent Brazil and Russia, may indeed be growth markets, but the explosive growth in domestic and regional travel in Asia shouldn't be mistaken for the slower rate of growth in long-haul travel.

Recently, Gatwick has shown that it is perfectly capable of taking on new flights to Southeast Asia, with routes having recently been announced or launched to Beijing, Hong Kong, Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), and the South Korean capital Seoul.

Whilst it would, of course, from a hubbing perspective be better off for these routes to be operated from Heathrow Airport, it would be utter commercial madness to open up a new airport based on the expansion in these markets, when so many other markets are stagnating or declining.

When these factors are combined, projections of 400 million passengers per year using London airports seem completely fanciful.

8) Catapult Effect

London is not some regional city with a small airport on the edge of town serving that market. Right across the M4 corridor and up towards Oxford are thousands of businesses which have chosen that location because it gives them easy access to Heathrow.

Meanwhile in Paddington, Kensington and numerous other places to the west of London there are thousands of hotels geared up towards welcoming guests who have flown in to Heathrow Airport.

A new airport of this size would catapult London's economic geography 180°, causing a seismic shift in the way homes and businesses were oriented.

Whereas developments like HS2 will have to pay compensation payments to people who are affected along the route, a Thames Hub airport would create a reverse blight where billions of pounds would be wiped off the value of commercial and residential property throughout London and the south-east, but no compensation will be payable.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs which are closely related to the airport would also have to be moved. Whilst the new airport would obviously create its own opportunities, they would have to be balanced against this highly disruptive effect. A new airport of this nature may also require a number of new towns to be developed to serve it, quashing any idea that by building in the sea there is no land take.

Meanwhile, the government has implied that it will meet the cost of providing the necessary transport infrastructure this new airport would need. All of these developments would meet substantial opposition, and the nightmare scenario of an airport which is not just in the middle of the estuary, but which ends up being in the middle of nowhere because it has no transport links could easily evolve. This has happened plenty of times before, for example the massive Denver airport, which opened as long ago as 1991 still has no rail link, and it this won’t be complete until 2015.

More worryingly, the government seems to be proceeding full speed ahead with plans for this airport whilst also developing the HS2 rail link without considering how the two might be integrated. Foster has suggested that the airport might be joined to some kind of orbital railway which would then have links with the other main lines as they approach London. This would have a number of serious disadvantages -- apart from the huge cost of such a line, it will also be mixing regional and high-speed traffic, so it would either have a significantly limited capacity, or it would need to have four tracks, massively increasing the cost. Also, building this line would mean a loss of services which would otherwise head for London but instead would be routed towards the airport, diminishing the standard of services into central London.

A more realistic option would be that regional connections could be provided by extending Crossrail into the new airport, and that faster services could be provided through a spur from the HS1 line. However, such a route would need a central London calling point or terminus. Current proposals are for a link between the two lines, without calling at Euston or St Pancras, so any kind of fast link from the airport to the Midlands and beyond would also have its usefulness diminished by not calling in central London.

If there is any kind of prospect of this airport happening, any new design for Euston needs to be reconsidered quick smart, so that it is oriented east-west to cater for this traffic.

9) Catch up myth

Backers of the Thames estuary airport scheme claim that something must be done to avoid London losing its status as the busiest international airport hub. This is misleading on two counts -- firstly the notion that other airports are hot on Heathrow's heels, and secondly the notion that this actually matters.

Paris Charles de Gaulle, Madrid Barajas, Amsterdam Schiphol and to a lesser extent Frankfurt International all have a wide selection of routes from low-cost airlines.

Heathrow on the other hand has two routes to Germany (Stuttgart, Cologne -- Germanwings), and a handful of flights to Spain operated by Vueling. The dominance of Paris is also bolstered by the centralised way France’s transport network is organised -- French regional airports offer far fewer international flights than their British counterparts, whereas Charles de Gaulle can also suck in passengers from north, south, east and west by TGV. Even with the best high-speed links available, the new Thames airport would be around half an hour east of Heathrow, which is in a much better position to benefit from HS2 and any future high-speed link to the West Country and Wales.

Even if Heathrow does eventually lose the Crown 'world's busiest international airport', it is just one title. Whilst London will remain the world's busiest aviation city for quite some time, even this is again just a title. The busiest airport in the world at the moment is Atlanta, but what does that specifically do for the city, above and beyond the benefits of simply having a major hub airport?

Granted, many businesses have chosen to locate because of the airport, but Atlanta is still a minnow on the world tourism stage, and its world city status is nothing like that of London or New York. Is Chicago any less a city for only having the second busiest airport in the world? In reality, the world’s most ‘useful’ airport – i.e. the one which brings the most passengers in and out of the city it serves (as opposed to just transfer passengers passing through) – is Los Angeles. Does LA brag about that title? No, of course it doesn’t – they are far too busy concentrating on being the world’s entertainment capital.

Merely handling more passengers, especially shuffling transfer traffic which has a marginal gain, is not necessarily as attractive as promoters would suggest. Airports are also just as good as bringing people out of the country as they are at bringing people in, so any claimed economic benefits should not be taken as gospel.

With regards to other rapidly growing airports like Dubai or Beijing Capital, it simply isn't comparing like with like. These economies are going through phenomenal growth, and the Middle East in particular is sprouting vast new cities with very little population in the way between them.

Airports in many Asian countries are able to expand without the same planning constraints we have in the UK, whereas the Gulf region in particular has no corporation tax. This means that airlines like Emirates are able to compete for flights to Asia and Australasia on much more favourable terms than their European counterparts. This means there is a certain volume of traffic that is always going to get sucked through Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi, whether we like it or not.

Passengers using these flights can start their journey in Gatwick, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow or Birmingham without needing to touch on Heathrow, and certainly without needing a Thames Hub airport. This arrangement might not be beneficial to the UK economy, but there is very little that the government can do about it, especially as it continues to penalise home grown airlines with punitive taxes.

10) Compelling argument (lack of)

Clearly, the economic, geographic and environmental arguments in favour of this airport do not stack up. However, if there was one argument in favour of this new airport which might be compelling, it would be the idea of combining all of London's hub traffic under one single roof.

The prospect of one long single terminal, perhaps in a similar manner to Paris Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2, where people from around the world could unite and connect in one place does indeed sound attractive.

However, size alone isn't everything. Despite our obsession with India and China, any analysis on the concept of a world city will always place New York and London at the top of the list. New York has a similar problem with crowded airspace and congested airports as London, however, they have adopted a much more practical response.

What New York shows is that a city can offer two hubs which serve two different groups of airlines. The largest carrier to have a hub operation in New York is United Continental, who are the dominant player at New York Newark, whereas other airlines concentrate their operations at JFK. Regional shuttle flights tend to use La Guardia whereas some low-cost traffic is also handled by Long Island and Westchester County Airports.

It would be foolish to pretend that the arrangements adopted by either New York or London present the perfect answer to travellers’ needs, but it would be equally foolish to pretend that a new Thames Hub airport presents a compelling case for a better option.

If London needs new capacity

If the plane was only invented yesterday, then maybe somewhere could be found to handle all of London's flights in one place, and maybe, given the density of south-east England, it would be cheaper to build in the Thames Estuary, instead of having to relocate people. But this is not the case, and the UK is neither a totalitarian state in a position to dictate to other airports that they must close, nor is it an oil-rich state which has the money to embark on such a project.

There is plenty of space at London’s other airports to cater for additional demand in point to point services. If demand warrants it, Gatwick could expand by adding an extra runway and midfield terminal, which could take its capacity up to a similar level of Heathrow’s current capacity. A spacious new terminal, together with an upgraded rail link to London could make it attractive as a second hub, particularly if feeder flights from an airline like Flybe were to tie in with an airline alliance, most likely Skyteam, which includes Delta, Air France and KLM. This would be far more politically acceptable than a third runway at Heathrow, and it would cost much less than a new Thames Airport.

It might not be as exciting, and it would not be without its problems, but it would be a lot more workable.

Update 23/2/12 - I may have been a little over-critical on point (4) regarding contraints. I based my analysis on Foster's drawings, which still look very much as though they are cut and pasted from his Hong Kong airport. I also compared the current terminal footprint of Heathrow with what is being proposed, again going on rough estimates of the space between the runways, as no scale drawings have been provided.

However, it may be possible to squeeze in more passengers by optimising the terminal layout, or even using more undergound linkage.

This is something I will look into in more detail, particularly with regards to my view that Gatwick Airport could handle almost as many passengers as a Thames Hub, without the risk of an estuary location. Such expansion could be managed in phases if and when needed, and would operate in tandem with Heathrow, not as an alternative.

Even with an optimised layout, the new airport would still be extremely expensive to build, making it unlikely to appeal to any regional carriers.