BAA does not need to compensate homeowners blighted by the prospect of a second runway at Stansted. It simply needs to redo its sums.

Stansted is wedded to budget airlines. The most volatile sector of aviation can least afford the inevitable consequences of the oil crisis, the Government’s commitment to emissions trading, and calls — most recently by Jacques Barrot, the EU’s next transport commissioner — for the ending of tax concessions on aviation fuel. Those forces will combine to knock for six any projections for cheap flights.

The trouble with BAA’s predict-and-provide approach is that predictions can be wrong. BAA should save its £4 billion and allow homeowners to breathe more easily — literally.

Michael Fairchild,
Little Hadham, Hertfordshire

Gaping wound

STANSTED airport has never made a commercial profit and is subsidised by Heathrow. Plans for Stansted’s expansion are based on the same business model, which does nothing positive for BAA’s share price. Against this background, it is no surprise that it can afford to compensate only a handful of the thousands who have been trapped in their homes.

Stansted is a contributor to the UK’s growing trade deficit, a gaping wound from which flows increasing amounts of sterling to be spent abroad by those accepting penny flights. Prolonging this situation hardly seems to be of such national importance that it makes the rough justice at Stansted acceptable.

Ken McDonald,
Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex

Parking space

ADDITIONAL capacity will not be needed. Air traffic will be curtailed by the cost and shortage of fuel.

Jet fuel is refined from light crude oils, and as Middle East crudes are increasingly used, yields will fall and processing efficiency will decline. In any case, there is insufficient crude oil in the reserves to support the expansion of air traffic envisaged, and by the time the new runways are built they will serve only as parking lots for superfluous aircraft.

The people near Stansted airport are due to lose everything they value to a needless runway expansion that pays no regard to economic realities.

Investment is needed in renewable energy, not in projects requiring increased drawing from the world’s fast-emptying oil wells.