Gatwick aims to move runway centreline to expand capacity

The airport officially announced a three-month consultation on the plans for a second runway between September and December this year after stating the project would bring in 18,400 new jobs.

According to the airport the amendment to the runway centre positioning would meet international safety standards required to let Gatwick operate as a dual-runway airport.

Construction details, timescales or costs have not been released for the project however the airport said that the changes would allow it to increase capacity to approximately 75M passengers per year by 2038 and bring in £1.5bn per year in GVA to the region.

As the proposed Northern Runway plans are considered a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, the airport plans to apply for a Development Consent Order (DCO) to build and operate the scheme.

Other elements of the proposals include improved airport access, highway improvements, as well as additional landscape/ecological planting and environmental mitigation.

Gatwick says that the project proposals are low impact and are in line with Government policy of making best use of existing runways. The project will be delivered in a sustainable way which helps to achieve the Government’s overall goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Gatwick Airport chief executive officer Stewart Wingate said: “While we are currently experiencing low passenger and air traffic volumes due to the global pandemic, we are confident that Gatwick will not only fully recover to previous passenger levels, but has the potential to continue to grow back into one of Europe’s premier airports.

"Our plans to bring our existing Northern Runway into routine use will not only help to secure that growth but will also ensure many thousands of additional jobs and a vital boost to the economy for our local region.

“We would like to hear views from local people and interested groups on the proposed Northern Runway Project as part of our comprehensive public consultation process and encourage everyone to take time to review our plans.

“Aside from the economic benefits our plans will have, we remain committed to our sustainability goals, and our Northern Runway plans are designed to be a low impact way of unlocking new capacity from our existing infrastructure, much of which is already in place.”

Details of the expansion were first proposed in 2018’s “Master Plan” for the airport, which said that an extra runway would add 55,000 flights a year. The scheme is also environmentally sustainable, in line with Gatwick's commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Recent half-year losses of £245M haven't dented the airport operator's expansion plans despite the economic impact of the pandemic.

The forthcoming consultation has been criticised by the Campaign Against Gatwick Noise and Emissions (CAGNE) - an umbrella aviation community and environmental group for Sussex, Surrey, and Kent - which said it didn’t meet government policy of ‘making best use of current facilities’ and would add an extra 1m tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere on top of the airports current emissions

In a statement CAGNE said: “It is despicable for a company to ignore the emissions that planes in and out of Gatwick produce that is causing grave danger for future generations that will have to pay the price for today’s greed of this leisure airport [...]

“Climate change is one of the greatest and most pressing threats facing the modern world and yet Gatwick ignores this fact and endeavours to push forward with a second runway. Constraint of an industry must be the answer if we are to save the planet for future generations.”

The public consultation will run from 9th September 2021 to 1st December 2021.

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