Airports: Capacity

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the average percentage of total capacity used at London’s commercial airports over the past six months.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, between May and October 2012 there were 525,000 commercial air transport movements at the five largest commercial London airports: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City. These air transport movements used around 86% of the available runway capacity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, why are we allowing the London airport system to run out of capacity?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are not. We have set up the South East Airports Task Force to look at short-term measures to gain some capacity at Heathrow. In the rather longer term, we have the aviation policy framework, which we are committed to publishing in March 2013. Finally, we have set up the Airports Commission, headed up by Sir Howard Davies.