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20 - Nov - 2014

Gatwick expansion plans run into more troubles.

 

Wingate, the Boss at Gatwick airport has come out strongly to defend the airports position in their expansion bid. Wingate was reacting to suggestions by the Airports commission that the charges on passengers would increase more than 100 percent from £9 to as high as £23. Wingate gave a spirited defence saying that the airport could manage to finance the whole project and the increase would be minimal from £9 to just £15, much lower than the airports omission estimates.

Sir Howard, the commission’s Chair, had additionally said that Gatwick alone could not finance the whole expansion singularly. It would require a mix of increase in charges and government interventions to make it a success. The expansion, the commission estimates will cost £9.3 billion higher than Gatwick’s estimate of £7.8 billion. Gatwick’s boss, however, disputes these higher figures as unnecessarily inflated. Gatwick says the expansion will happen on its own land, a half mile away from the current existing runway. The land had been set aside for expansion ten years ago, but had never been used.  Availability of some of the resources required in expansion, means that the cost cannot be as high as is estimated by the Airports commission and taxpayers need not be burdened to finance this second runway.

The airports commission further says that the economic benefits of a 2nd runway at Gatwick are far much less, at £127 billion, than those derived from expansion at rivals Heathrow, at  £214 billion, although more people would be affected by expansion  at Heathrow than at Gatwick at 900,000 and 30,000 respectively

Wingate, however, says that figures on economic benefits are just hypothetical, to now the actual benefits to be realised, he insists Gatwick should be allowed to build the airport.

By Airport Pickups London