Runway for the few

This report is an investigation into air passenger demand in UK airports to consider the ‘need’ for a new runway at Heathrow airport.

The key finding of this report is that the relative importance of business travel as compared with tourism has been dramatically overstated in the discourse around airport expansion. 

This report shows that the driving force for new airport capacity in the South East of England is leisure travel. Whilst a number of convoluted arguments have been deployed to invoke potential regional benefits from Heathrow expansion, it is clear that when it comes to consumers, the proposed new runway is primarily required to service the wealthy frequent leisure flyers from London and the South East.