She was sitting in a window seat on the left-hand side of the plane, as it banked to line up with the airport. The view through the window covered the breadth of London, but she was further away from the Thames than normal. In the distance, there was the distinct outline of another aircraft with its wheels down on a parallel approach. This was different, and then it dawned on her that this was the first time she was touching down on the most expensive bit of tarmac ever made in the UK - Heathrow’s third runway.
This is perhaps how most people will eventually experience Heathrow’s proposed third runway. But before we get that far, it’s worth exploring the area that it might occupy. If you walk around the airport, you will inevitably pass through the village of Longford, located on the northwest corner. It’s a small village with two bus stops, two pubs, and a nursery. A few houses in the area are boarded up. One house has scaffolding erected. There is an outsized presence of expensive hire cars parked alongside Bath Road which runs through the village, waiting for their next job. Otherwise, nothing seems out of the ordinary except for its neighbor, Heathrow.
Although the airport is mostly out of sight, the planes are everywhere, taking off right over your head or landing in the near distance. The village notice board is full of stickers: ‘No third runway,’ ‘Stop Heathrow expansion,’ ‘No 3rd Runway Coalition,’ ‘No climate-wrecking third runway at Heathrow,’ and ‘Flower show & produce sale.’ If the runway project ever goes ahead, Longford will be razed to make way.
Harmondworth, north of Heathrow with the 'Stop Heathrow Expansion' placards.
Sipson, a village located to the east of Longford, borders an area that will be home to a future sixth terminal and the third runway. As you leave the village you pass by Heathrow Primary School, its logo an illustration of Concorde.
But the school bears no relationship to the airport, nor does it have any connection with the supersonic jet from the 1970s. Heathrow might be a city, but it’s one with no permanent residents and it has no school-aged children. The road connecting Sipson with Harmondsworth is narrow and quiet. Either side of the road is a desolate no-man’s land of abandoned buildings, fields, and a landfill site with the airport visible in the distance.
Longhaul
Heathrow’s third runway project has been underway for decades. Its runways were originally organized in a Star of David pattern to accommodate different wind directions. There was a North and South runway, running west to east, and two crosswind runways, the last of which was permanently closed in 2005 and has since been converted into a taxiway.
The original plan for Heathrow, unveiled in 1946, was for the airport to have nine runways. If you look at that plan, you will notice that it featured two short runways north of the current layout. In essence, plans for the airport’s expansion have been underway since it was still on the drawing board. This drawing was also included in BAA’s (Heathrow’s previous owner) original proposal for the third runway project in 2005, a not-so-subtle nod that this project was always there. Nowadays, the airport is owned by a Spanish company, as is British Airways, the sole tenant of Terminal 5.
A Singapore Airlines 747 about to land on runway 09L with the construction of Terminal 5 in the background, 2006
Heathrow operates at around 98% capacity, leaving little room for expansion and no room for delays. It also operates under strict noise and time restrictions, with only a limited number of planes allowed to land before 06:00 and no take-offs allowed after 23:30, except under special circumstances. Heathrow slots, sold in pairs, are in high demand and can cost millions of dollars. A single slot allows for one landing or take-off. A slot pair once sold for $75 million.
Other options
You might be asking yourself, why not build a new airport somewhere else where it will have less impact on the surrounding communities or expand another airport? The Department of Transport looked at several options before settling on Heathrow, from expanding Stansted or Gatwick to plans to build a new super-hub airport in the Thames Estuary. The latter idea was dreamt up by Norman Foster and his company Fosters & Partners. Foster also designed Stansted, Hong Kong’s ‘Chek Lap Kok’, Beijing International Airport, and the abandoned Mexico City Texcoco airport. Of particular note here is ‘Chek Lap Kok’, as it was built offshore with planes landing and departing over water, resulting in less noise impact on the local population. In hindsight, this idea was perhaps more of a distraction than a solution. What might work in Asia will not necessarily work in the UK.
Heathrow automatic pod taking passengers to and from the parking lot outside the airport to Terminal 5. This area will undergo significant changes even before the new runway arrives with the construction of a new wall to dampen noise when the airport finally starts using its northerly runway for take-off during easterly operations.
Heathrow has undergone significant changes to its layout within its boundaries, over the years. In 1978, the government decided that a proposed fourth terminal should be subject to a public inquiry, which lasted 96 days. The airport authority was informed that this would be the last permitted expansion. However, Heathrow continued to see growth in traffic and in 1991, Richard Rogers was awarded the contract to design Terminal 5, which would become the future home of British Airways. The public inquiry for this project took four years and concluded in 1999, making it the longest running inquiry in the UK at that time. During the inquiry, BAA, the airport owner at the time, emphasized that Heathrow would not require a third runway in the future. The terminal opened with much fanfare in March 2008, having taken a total of 17 years to come to fruition.
The UK government has had a mixed stance on Heathrow’s expansion plans. The third runway project was initially proposed by the Labour government in the late 90s. In 2006, the Department for Transport started a public consultation for a shorter runway located northwest of the existing two. This project was canceled in 2010 by the coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. It was then revived when the next government took office, and in 2018, the House of Commons voted in favor of it going ahead. In early 2020, that decision was challenged on environmental grounds.
Legal challenges
Multiple organizations took the UK government to court and initially managed to repeal the decision to expand Heathrow, as it breached the Paris Accord. The UK had already committed to the UN Agreement, designed to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees of what they are today. This decision then went to the Supreme Court, where the government won. A lawyer working against the expansion, Tim Crosland, broke confidentiality before the announcement was made public. He was convicted of contempt of court and fined £5,000, a conviction he is currently appealing with the European Court of Human Rights. Other protests have involved buying up plots of land around the airport, which the airport would ultimately require for expansion. This would force the airport into prolonged legal battles. In parallel to the court action, Covid-19 had reduced air traffic at the airport to a minimum, rendering a decision to expand the airport a somewhat abstract conversation.
Back to normal
The airport has now recovered from Covid-19 and is back operating at full capacity. Plans for a third runway are again in the spotlight but under renewed scrutiny. Aviation is not the same as it was before the pandemic; there is a growing realization of its contribution to global warming. People are also increasingly aware of the impact airports have on noise levels and how that affects their quality of life, especially coming out of the pandemic when the airspace above even a big city like London, was relatively quiet. With the planes back in the sky, people notice them more.
Harmondsworth Lane, a small and usually very quiet stretch of road that connects Harmondsworth with Sipson, is almost exactly where the potential third runway will be.
The proposed third runway, located further north of the existing two, would affect neighbourhoods that are currently not under the flight paths. It can be hard to grasp what that impact actually means if you don’t live under one. To give you some idea, the noise created by planes destined for Heathrow more or less starts in and around the airspace above Peckham in southeast London, 30 km from the airport, and only increases as they descend further towards the airport.
In May 2020, my company Good Caesar launched a small project called Planes Over London, which provides those living under Heathrow’s flight path with a 14-day forecast on whether planes will be overflying the capital or not. Whether they do, depends primarily on the wind direction. This project has, among other things, provided us with a very valuable insight into noise pollution and the impact it has on the communities below it. There have been multiple conversations about spreading the noise over a bigger area, concentrating on a small narrow stretch across London, so that more people carry the burden. But this would impose noise on areas that are currently unaffected and would naturally cause an uproar. The third runway would be the first time that the airport would truly expand beyond its current footprint, and this would affect about 2.2 million more people than it does today.
The story of Heathrow’s possible expansion is by no means over, nor is the fight against it or the government’s push to proceed. There is perhaps an underlying sense of foreboding. If the project is ever completed, Heathrow Primary School on the outskirts of Sipson will finally live up to its logo, with flights literally flying right over it. The third runway was conceived in the late 90s, designed in the 2000s, and may ultimately see its first landing in the 2030s, by which time the need for a new runway may be either completely unnecessary or wholly inadequate.
This piece originally appeared in Volume 2 of Direction of Travel.