Airports

Liverpool airport is a curiously unreal place in the half-light before dawn on a cold November morning. Out across the Mersey at high tide, raindrops turn the silver to lead, and at the easyJet departures gate people in tracksuit bottoms brush against the occasional tweed and Remembrance Day poppy. Intending stag-weekenders, and the set who have a little place in the Pyrenees, coincide but do not mingle. A young woman is trying to buy rosé wine, and an elderly gent is trying to find a copy of that morning’s Times. The elderly gent is me, flying to Barcelona for the day for my sister’s 60th birthday lunch, to return that night to Manchester.

Surprise surprise, airport expansion is going to cost more than anyone expected. Howard Davies, of the Airport Commission fame, took to the Today programme this morning to kick off the public consultation while informing delighted flyers (who will likely end up footing part of the bill) that a second runway at Gatwick will cost £2 billion more than previously suggested. A third runway or runway extension at Heathrow will be in the region of an additional £3-4 billion.

I made a welcome escape from sweltering Warsaw to the cloudy cool of Bodø, halfway up the coast of Norway, north of Iceland. Bodø’s harbour stays ice-free all year round only thanks to the Gulf Stream. The fjords bubble with whirlpools and offer some of the best cold-water scuba diving in the world. When the mist clears, the air in this visibly prosperous place has an Alpine, colour-enhancing quality. It’s my first time beyond the Arctic circle and the dusk through the night makes it hard to sleep. ‘Now imagine,’ says the wife over the phone from Washington, ‘what it was like to try to go to sleep in a Soviet-era hotel in Vorkuta, in late June, without curtains.

Last week I experienced the horror of Stansted Airport. I had paid for a fast track through security to avoid the hell of standing in a queue for an hour behind people grappling to put their haemorrhoid cream and K-Y Jelly into a see-though bag and struggling to the conveyor belt with their trousers around their ankles. My flight being massively delayed, I set off for a restaurant named The Bridge where the food was so bad I began to wish it was an actual bridge from which I could throw myself off. Of course, the bit of egg and bacon I ordered cost more than my flight (I was flying Outdoor Toilet Airlines). ‘Tell us if you do not have much time to go to your boarding gate and we will guarantee your food within 15 minutes’ read the notice by the restaurant entrance.

Gatwick or Heathrow, who will triumph in the battle of the airports? Both sides have submitted more detailed proposals to the Airports Commission today, setting out why they are the right choice for expanding the UK's airport capacity. While Boris Island appears to be mostly sidelined, the battle is looking to be between a second runway at Gatwick and a third (or possibly extending the second) runway at Heathrow. In the revised proposals, Heathrow has increased its compensation fund for the effected 750 homeowners to £550 million, while Gatwick argues its expansion would be cheaper, more beneficial and have a lesser environmental impact — 14,000 people vs 250,000 for Heathrow.

In the past few minutes, the Airports Commission has published its interim report. It's the first big opportunity for there to be a political row over aviation capacity since the government kicked the issue into the long grass, and Sir Howard Davies' shortlist in this interim report certainly provides some opportunities for a row. The shortlist as it stands does not include Boris Johnson's favoured Estuary Airport, instead favouring new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick. The Commission will now consider a 3,000 metre runway south of the existing runway at Gatwick, and two different runways at Heathrow: a 3,500 metre runway to the northwest of the airport, and a 6,000 metre runway to the west which could be run as two separate runways.

What’s happening? Tomorrow, former CBI economist Howard Davies will release an interim report on the options for expanding Britain’s airport capacity. Some of the possibilities Davies has been considering include developing the regional airports (possibly with a High Speed rail element), building a new giant hub airport in the Thames Estuary, expanding capacity at Gatwick or Stansted Airports, or building a new runway at Heathrow. What will Davies say tomorrow?

Danny Alexander has delivered his eagerly anticipated infrastructure statement to the Commons. He described the package as 'the most comprehensive, ambitious and long-lasting capital investment plans this country has ever known.' That's quite a claim, Danny. To judge the truth of it, the public can examine the speech below, the Treasury's interactive guides and the full document here. Major upgrades are planned to the road and rail networks in certain places. And substantial investment has been earmarked for schools, high-speed broadband and scientific research. This is all well and good. There are, however, a couple of notable gaps.

The chair of the government's airports commission was refreshingly honest about the purpose of his review when he appeared on the Today programme this morning. Sir Howard Davies said: 'I have reflected quite hard on the criticisms about long grass that the Mayor of London and Michael Heseltine say, that this is booted into the long grass. So how can you make best use of your time in the long grass? What I think we can do is do a lot of the preparatory work. I think we can do that so that when a new government comes into office in 2015 when they make a decision it will have a flying start. I aim to to be a really expert piece of work looking at how you think about airport capacity which I hope internationally will be leading edge.