Manchester has room to grow, but no airport can replace Heathrow
Without a strong Heathrow hub Britain risks sending passengers and trade through rival airports in Europe and the Middle East, writes Surinder Arora
Heathrow is not simply a London airport.
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It is the United Kingdom's only major hub airport: critical national infrastructure that connects families, exporters, investors, tourists and businesses to the world. The decisions taken now will therefore shape Britain's connectivity and competitiveness for decades.
That national role is sometimes misunderstood. Regional airports and Heathrow largely perform different, complementary functions. Manchester, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Belfast and other regional airports are best placed to serve direct routes where local demand can sustain them, particularly domestic and European services and long-haul routes with a sufficiently strong local market. A hub performs a different task: it pools demand from many origins, making a much broader range of long-haul destinations and frequencies viable.
That network effect matters. Regional airports provide breadth across the UK; Heathrow provides global depth. A passenger from a UK region can benefit from Heathrow's network even where their local airport could never support the same intercontinental route directly. Without a strong UK hub, the alternative in many markets is not necessarily a new direct regional service; it may be a connection through Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Istanbul or a Middle Eastern hub, with part of the strategic and economic value of that connectivity sitting overseas.
So this should not be framed as Heathrow versus Manchester, or London versus the regions. Britain needs successful regional airports and a successful, affordable hub. Used properly, each makes the other more productive and the country better connected.
The question is therefore not whether Britain should be ambitious about Heathrow. It is how we turn ambition into delivery - and do so at a pace and cost that airlines, passengers and the country can sustain.
For years, governments of different political colours have debated a third runway. The previous timetable envisaged flights from new capacity by 2035. Recent reporting, following Heathrow Airport Limited's own comments on the planning timetable, now points to operations potentially slipping to 2039 if consent is obtained in 2029. Four years matter. More importantly, another cycle of delay risks becoming another lost decade while competing hubs invest, expand and capture routes, trade and passengers that Britain should be competing to serve.
We should also learn from the experience of major UK infrastructure programmes, including HS2: scope, cost, sequencing, governance and delivery discipline must be confronted at the beginning, not after commitments become difficult and expensive to unwind. Heathrow expansion is too important to allow complexity to become an excuse for delay or escalating cost.
The Government has established a planning framework for a Northwest Runway and has said that Heathrow Airport Limited's proposal informed its policy review. That should not, however, become a de facto decision that only the incumbent can deliver the infrastructure. The Government's own consultation material recognises that separate promoter consultations may be brought forward, and the Civil Aviation Authority has been examining regulatory approaches that can accommodate competitive delivery and an alternative developer.
That opportunity now needs to be made real. Incumbency inevitably brings information, interfaces and established regulatory relationships. Those practical advantages must not become barriers that prevent a credible alternative from being assessed on equal terms. Nor should institutional familiarity with the existing model be allowed to substitute for an objective comparison of cost, phasing, financeability, operability, passenger outcomes and delivery risk.
Heathrow West is not asking for preferential treatment. We are asking for a transparent, rules-based and genuinely level playing field: common information, common assumptions, common evaluation criteria and a regulatory framework that can accommodate the best deliverable solution, whoever promotes it. Competition is not an ideological end in itself. It tests assumptions, disciplines cost, encourages innovation, and gives airlines and consumers a credible benchmark against which to judge value.
Heathrow West has developed an alternative approach with an experienced international team, including Bechtel, and with extensive engagement across the airline community. At its heart is a simple proposition: do not make the first increment of new runway capacity dependent on solving every element of the ultimate airport configuration at once.
Our proposed two-phase approach is designed to bring useful capacity forward earlier. The first phase would deliver an initially shorter Northwest Runway and the essential infrastructure needed to open it without first undertaking the most complex and costly intervention associated with the M25. A subsequent phase would extend and complete the runway solution as demand and the wider programme require. In parallel, new terminal infrastructure - including the proposed Terminal 6 - can be developed in a way that is modular, operationally practical and aligned with airline demand.
Phasing matters because it can reduce the amount of capital that must be committed before benefits begin to flow. It can separate critical-path works from later enhancements, create earlier operational capacity and provide clearer gateways at which cost, demand and performance can be tested. Done properly, that means a better prospect of delivery by 2035 rather than accepting 2039 as inevitable, while reducing financing and construction pressure that would otherwise feed through to airport charges – which ultimately impact airline economics and consumer prices.
For airlines, affordability is not a side issue. It determines whether routes can be opened and sustained. For passengers, it ultimately affects fares, choice and experience. For the UK economy, an expanded hub only delivers its promised growth if people and businesses can afford to use it.
Private finance does not make infrastructure free. The costs of airport investment ultimately enter the economic system through which airport users pay. That is why the regulatory architecture for expansion must be settled before the largest spending decisions are locked in.
The objective should be straightforward: investment at the lowest efficient cost, with risk allocated to those best able to manage it; meaningful airline and user involvement; transparent benchmarking; strong capital governance; and no assumption that the largest capital programme is necessarily the best one. The right test is the right infrastructure, delivered at the right time, at the right cost and with the right operational outcome.
A regulatory model that permits genuine competition can also protect the public interest by exposing cost and delivery assumptions to challenge. If Heathrow West's approach is more affordable, faster or more efficient, it should be able to demonstrate that transparently. If another proposal performs better against the same criteria, the same framework should reveal that too.
The Government is right to consider Heathrow against economic growth, climate, air quality, noise and community impacts. Those statutory and policy tests must be met. But within that framework, Britain should be equally demanding about deliverability, affordability and competition.
We are ready to play our part. Heathrow West is willing and able to bring forward a credible alternative, to work with Government, the CAA, airlines, local communities and the wider airport ecosystem, and to subject our plans to transparent scrutiny. We believe the country can expand its only hub without accepting a false choice between speed and discipline, or between ambition and affordability.
The next decision should not be shaped by who has always operated Heathrow. It should be shaped by what will best deliver the capacity Britain needs, on a timetable the country can rely on, at a cost airlines and consumers can afford.
We should not let another decade pass us by. We should not allow the lessons of past infrastructure programmes to go unheeded. And we should not close the door on the transformative power of competition before we have properly tested it.
Britain can have a stronger Heathrow, stronger regional airports and a stronger national aviation network. We can build new runway and terminal capacity in a way that is phased, financeable and operationally deliverable. And we can create a framework in which the best proposal wins on merit.
That is the opportunity before us. It is time to get Heathrow expansion done - transparently, competitively, affordably and on time.
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Surinder Arora is Founder and Chairman of Arora Group.
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