Boris moves forward with Heathrow-on-Sea plans

Controversial plans to build a giant new airport in the Thames Estuary have taken a significant step forward after it emerged that London Mayor Boris Johnson has appointed former chief scientist Sir David King to head an in-depth feasibility study into the proposals.

Under plans developed by Douglas Oakervee, an engineer who helped plan Hong Kong’s island airport, a new four-runway airport would be built on a three-mile-long artificial island built in the outer Thames Estuary. Dubbed " Heathrow-on-Sea", the £40bn airport could be built by 2029 and would be linked to Heathrow and the continent using new high-speed rail links, effectively creating a major new transport hub for Northern Europe.

King, who has previously described climate change as a greater threat to international security than terrorism, told The Sunday Times that transferring flights from Heathrow to the new airport could deliver environmental benefits.

"There is a fairly obvious attraction to Oakervee's plan, which is that you essentially move that enormous mess of flight paths over London into the estuary, with all the noise and pollution that go with it," he said. "Is this a white elephant? I wouldn't be taking this on if I thought there were a simple answer."

Advocates of the proposals argue that they could also help to curb carbon emissions by limiting the need for aircraft to circle the capital waiting for a landing slot and encouraging more people to use high-speed rail links to travel from the airport to locations in the UK and continental Europe.

Oakervee told the paper that early studies indicate that the proposals are technically feasible, adding that a new airport will be necessary to meet anticipated increases in demand for flights. “We have to stop this short-termist mentality in planning. If you do nothing to our airports by 2030, the shortfall will be massive.

"Even if you build runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick, you'll be two runways short of what is needed," he said. "Forget arguments about a third runway, by 2030 we'll need a new airport."

Mayor Johnson is said to be keen on the idea of a new airport and would like to see it eventually replace Heathrow altogether. The Mayor's Office has also reportedly received early interest from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, which are expected to fund much of the project if it gets the go-ahead.

However, environmentalists have been quick to criticise the proposals, arguing that they are inconsistent with the UK's plans to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and ignore predictions that demand for air travel will expand far slower than originally anticipated.

"They should not be considering this given the need to tackle climate change, " said Richard Dyer, transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "It may stop some of the local environmental impacts created by Heathrow, but it will create new impacts in the estuary and it will only make carbon emissions worse. "

He added that proposals for airport expansion were based on increasingly dubious predictions that the demand for air travel will rise inexorably. "There is a question mark over demand," he said. "We are seeing more and more businesses looking at videoconferencing as an alternative to travel and rail has a larger role to play in the future. The assumptions that the underlying trend of increased demand will simply continue is increasingly unsound."