A century after it opened as a simple grass runway in a village west of London, Heathrow is likely to be transformed into the world’s biggest airport following a controversial decision by British lawmakers.
Construction of a third runway, one extending over the country’s busiest freeway was approved in a parliamentary vote that followed decades of debate over how to expand the UK’s capacity for air traffic.
Under the new proposal, passenger capacity at Heathrow might jump from nearly 80 million passengers per year to 110 million by 2030, making it, by current statistics, the world’s biggest in terms of traffic.
As well as boosting Heathrow’s status as an aviation hub and making it easier for visitors to explore the UK, this move is expected counter any economic fallout from the country’s “Brexit” from the European Union.
But the strong resistance to Heathrow’s expansion is likely to continue beyond the vote.
Pressure groups have long claimed that increasing the airport’s size and bringing in more air traffic over a heavily populated area will adversely impact those living nearby and irreparably hurt the environment. Hundreds of homes would be destroyed to facilitate the expansion.
If construction work to expand Heathrow does go ahead, the £14.3 billion ($20 billion) plan is to build a third runway northeast of and parallel to the existing two east-west strips.
The new airstrip would cross over the M25 motorway, London’s busy and regularly congested outer ring road. About 750 homes in the villages of Longford, Sipson and Harmondsworth could be flattened to make way.
Currently Heathrow is the world’s seventh busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, with 78 million in 2017.
Tags: Brexit, european union, Heathrow
