What the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton means for passengers

The government is poised to give the go-ahead to extra runways at the UK’s busiest airports, Heathrow and Gatwick. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to back expansion at the two biggest London airports, as well as increasing capacity at Luton. But such moves would cause controversy – with residents, environmentalists and Labour politicians.

As travel correspondent of The Independent, I’ve been reporting on airport expansion plans since the last century – here are the key questions and answers.

To put things in context – how significant is this?

Very. London is the world capital of aviation, with far more flights and passengers than any other city in the world. But that has been achieved with airport runways that are barely changed since the Second World War. Heathrow is the busiest two-runway airport in the world, and Gatwick – just around the M25 and down a bit – is the world’s busiest single-runway airport.

When things are working, they are testament to extracting a quart from a pint pot. Heathrow has landings and take-offs every 80 seconds or so, while air-traffic control at Gatwick can get one plane down and another taking off every 65 seconds. But when things go, as they say in aviation, Tango Uniform, plans unravel very quickly.

Over Christmas and the New Year bad weather caused many hundreds of cancellations affecting tens of thousands of passengers. We will probably see the same later this week with the predicted “weather bomb”. Build more capacity, get more resilience is the mantra from Heathrow and Gatwick.

Can you bring us up to speed on where we are with airport expansion?

Older readers may recall that David Cameron, when prime minister, commissioned Sir Howard Davies to decide on how best to increase airport capacity. A decade ago Sir Howard said a third runway at Heathrow was the way forward, at which point nothing happened – partly because one-time prime minister Boris Johnson had earlier vowed to lie down in front of the bulldozers if anyone tried to expand Heathrow, and also because Covid wiped out aviation for a couple of years.

With a limit of 1,315 aircraft movements each day, further growth at Heathrow can come mainly from airlines using larger aircraft and leaving fewer seats empty.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Growing the economy means adding capacity at…