Letter from Brian Ross (of Stop Stansted Expansion) in the Standard

Brian Ross writes that the aviation industry conflates its own interests with the interests of UK plc. hiding some inconvenient truths. By comparison with the UK, Japan with twice our population achieves twice our GDP with far less airport capacity. The reason being that less than a quarter of UK passengers are business travellers. Heathrow flies more holidaymakers to Miami than business people to China, and more passengers to Nice than to either Beijing or Shanghai. London airports last year handled 134 million passengers with more than 500 worldwide destinations direct.  No other city in the world comes close to that level of capacity and connectivity. Government is right to stick to its election promise of no more runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick. And the industry should stop trying to re-open yesterday’s arguments.

http://standardonline.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx