General News
Below are links to stories of general interest in relation to aviation and airports.
Boris to fight (“undeliverable”) 3rd Heathrow runway; he won’t resign over it – but would fight from within Parliament
London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is now also MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, has said he would not resign as an MP if the Conservative government approved a Heathrow 3rd runway. He believes he would be better able to fight it by remaining in Parliament. Boris will now be attending the Cabinet - but he does not have a ministerial role, so he can devote his attention to his final year as Mayor. Boris has, for many years, been an outspoken opponent of a new Heathrow runway because of the highly negative impacts of noise and air pollution on Londoners. He has now said that if there was a Heathrow runway, with meeting air quality standards a very difficult challenge, there would have to be a new congestion charge zone around it. That would be the only way to tackle the traffic congestion and air pollution caused by so many extra road vehicles (as well as planes and airport vehicles). Boris said in his MP acceptance speech that he would join Zac Goldsmith and lie down "in front of those bulldozers and stop the building, stop the construction of that 3rd runway" at Heathrow. He said a 3rd Heathrow runway was "undeliverable" and that if the Airports Commission recommended it, he hoped their report would be "filed vertically [shelved]" as others had been.
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Research indicates further work needed on impact of air pollution on the brain
Research was carried out by researchers in the US, into the impact of higher levels of small particle air pollution on older adults and the chance of someone having signs of a "silent stroke" on a brain scan. The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Stroke. The study had various limitations,and reports may have exaggerated its findings. While there was an association between particulate matter in the air and total brain volume, this was no longer statistically significant after taking into account whether people have conditions such as high blood pressure, which can also affect their risk of stroke. While the news extrapolated these findings to suggest a link between air pollution and people’s risk of dementia, this is not what the study assessed. The study found some evidence of a link between one measure of air pollution and "silent stroke", but the limitations mean that this finding needs to be confirmed in other studies. Some have interpreted the study as indicating that air pollution is associated with insidious effects on structural brain ageing. The mechanism through which this might happen are unclear, but could involve inflammation. More research is needed.
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Comments by planning experts on the key planning decisions for the new government, including runway
Planning magazine asked various planning experts what they thought would be key issues for the new government. As well as several raising the problem of needing action to improve air quality by the end of 2015, one commented on the runway problem: "The Conservative party is not committed to implementing the Davies Commission recommendations, yet it seems to me that they are in a difficult position if they don’t: the Conservatives were the main architects of the Davies Commission – can they afford to be seen to waste five years of expenditure and delay? I fear the easiest solution will be for the next Government to say that they will use Davies’ work to inform the Airports National Policy Statement without giving a clear commitment either way and that we embark on another lengthy process before the NPS is adopted. interesting to see how interventionist the new Government is willing to be." Another said: "I am assuming that the decision will be implemented via the NSIP regime, but will this also include any associated terminal, car parking and warehousing development and major public transport improvement that will be associated with implementing the decision?" The need for the UK to produce a national spatial plan, which other EU countries have, was also mentioned.
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Heathrow / Gatwick / new runway? Residents campaign, political parties stay silent – avoiding the issue pre-election
The coalition government deliberately instructed the Airports Commission to report AFTER the general election, so there would be no active runway planning during the course of the last parliament. And the main parties are keeping pretty tight-lipped on the matter of a new runway in this election campaign, aware of just how unpopular a runway decision would be. So while the airports lobby feverishly, and the campaigners against airport expansion campaign, the electorate do not get to discuss the issue before they vote. The Tories just say they will "respond to the Commission" and Labour that it will “make a swift decision.” They are not even saying if they will take any notice of the Commission's recommendation. Gwyn Topham, with an excellent round-up on the issue in the Guardian says: "... decisions over the nation’s infrastructure after the 7 May election will involve billions in spending; affect tens of thousands of jobs; consign many communities to blight, noise and pollution; and alter the economic map of the UK. Yet political debate about the two most critical transport projects undertaken in decades [HS2 and a new runway] is all but absent." Policy ideas on aviation, such as they are, party by party.
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GACC critical of Gatwick’s promises – unless part of legal agreements signed before any runway consent
Gatwick’s latest leaflet to those that live around Gatwick is full of promises but provides no guarantees and misses much of the details, as usual. GACC (the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign) has suggested to the Airports Commission that they need to make sure that all the attractive looking promises made by the airport are real, and not just part of their publicity campaign - to be forgotten when the airport is sold. The promises should not unduly sway a decision about a 2nd runway, unless the airport can be compelled to keep their word. The reality is that there is no method of enforcing the various undertakings being made by Gatwick, other than by legal agreements. However, any new legal agreement would need to be negotiated before approval is given in principle for the runway, otherwise all bargaining power would be lost. GACC submitted this fact to Crawley Borough Council this week, which seemed to be unaware of it. Signing binding legal agreements would prove the airport's sincerity about its offers, rather than just using them for PR purposes. Gatwick is promising some compensation to a small number of people; it is promising £5,000 per house built for a Gatwick employee; £10 million towards motorway widening; and that landing charges would not rise above £15 till 2030.
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Research, in “Science” calls for ‘airspace reserves’ with reduced or restricted human activity (eg flights)
Researchers in Argentina and Wales have written a new paper, showing the increasing extent to which man-made structures, and human activities, are having an impact on creatures that fly. The scientists say growing numbers of skyscrapers, wind turbines, power lines, planes and drones threaten billions of flying birds and animals, huge numbers of which are killed in collisions. The researchers say "airspace reserves" should be created to protect wildlife, by providing airspace zones where human activity is partially or totally restricted to reduce the aerial conflict. These could be temporary zones, for example to help protect birds on their seasonal migrations, or permanent areas, put in place over key habitats. They need to be taken account of in planning for major construction projects. The authors say: "Most of the conservation in reserves and national parks is mainly focussed on the ground or more recently on water. None of them have focussed on the airspace." Bird strikes with planes cause a risk to humans, so drastic measures are taken to remove birds from the vicinity of airports. The impact of drones is yet to be assessed, but could become a problem.
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BA’s CEO, Willie Walsh, says post-election indecision will block building of any new south east runway
Willie Walsh, CEO of IAG, the parent company of British Airways, has again said that there will not be a new south east runway. He has often said this before, but this time he sees the likelihood of political indecision after the election as an additional issue. Willie Walsh thinks that to build a runway, there would need to be “political consensus across all the parties – not just coalition partners." He also warned that the cost of each of the 3 runway proposals would all be prohibitive. The expense would lead to higher landing costs, and airlines would not find that acceptable. Willie Walsh reiterated his view that there was “no business case” for a 2nd Gatwick runway, with not enough demand from airlines for it. He has said in the past that Gatwick does not have the same international attraction as Heathrow. He commented that Heathrow was already "the most expensive airport around." The runway decision would be a political one, and with a coalition government looking to be inevitable, there would be huge political difficulties in pushing through an unpopular runway, with dubious benefits even to the airlines.
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New briefing on the Airports Commission – why their runway recommendation is likely to be flawed and incomplete
Before the 2010 General Election, both Conservatives and LibDems had come out against new runways in SE England. However, by September 2012 the Coalition government set up an “Independent Commission” to look into the runway issue. Though the impression has been given that the Commission's work is thorough, painstaking, and has assiduously covered every issue, the reality is somewhat different. A short paper produced for AirportWatch (very readable) sets out the areas where the Commission's analysis has not dealt with issues adequately, including key social, health and environmental costs. Some examples are that the extent of claimed economic benefits of a new runway are based on an “innovative” - ie. unproven - economic model, which leaves out the cost of noise and air pollution. There is obfuscation on climate change, where the bald fact is that any new runway would almost certainly be inconsistent with the UK’s climate target for 2050. Air quality work has not been done. The paper concludes: "... politicians and others should feel entirely free to make their own judgements about airport expansion – based if possible on genuinely independent and unbiased evidence. They should not be influenced by recommendations from the Airports Commission. "
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Not only is the election silent on climate or the new runway issue, but the runway debate is silent on climate change
The glaring omission in this election of discussion of a range of issues has been noted by many commentators. A recent open letter in the Independent asked the parties to set out their polices on a range of climate issues. Tim Johnson, Director of the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), in a letter in the Independent, has said of the gap in the current political discourse about climate change, that this is "nowhere more apparent than in relation to the impending decision on airport expansion....Shortly after the election, the new government will receive the advice of the Airports Commission in relation to new runway capacity. But while the commission’s head, Howard Davies, speaks as though climate change impacts are being taken fully into account, in fact the commission’s own analysis predicts that aviation emissions will exceed the maximum level compatible with the UK’s Climate Change Act if any of its shortlisted schemes at Heathrow or Gatwick is granted approval. ....This enormous climate hurdle in the way of expansion appears almost totally absent from political debate. With a new runway potentially locking the UK into an emissions path entirely at odds with our long-term climate commitments, politicians will very soon need to face up to the CO2 consequences of sanctioning airport growth."
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Great majority of election candidates around Gatwick oppose a 2nd runway
GACC (Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign) members have carried out a survey of the views of parliamentary candidates about a new runway at Gatwick. All 11 Conservative Parliamentary candidates in the seats around Gatwick (Crawley, Horsham, Arundel and South Downs, Mole Valley, Reigate, East Surrey, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge & Malling, Tunbridge Wells, Mid Sussex, and Wealden) oppose a 2nd runway. So do all Green Party candidates. So do all UKIP candidates. Almost all Lib Dem candidates oppose a 2nd runway - except for a few; the odd ones out being the candidates for Crawley and Horsham. The Labour candidates are about equally divided, half for and half against the runway. Many of the candidates have now signed a pledge against the runway, appreciating the runway would produce an increase in aircraft noise, worsened environment and lack of infrastructure such as roads, rail, schools and hospitals. At the national level both the Labour and Conservative manifestos say in effect that they will wait for the recommendations of the Airports Commission (expected June/July). At the Lib Dem conference last year a resolution supporting a Gatwick runway was overwhelmingly defeated, and their manifesto reflects this policy but leaves a little wriggle room if the Airports Commission comes up with "compelling new evidence."