So Tim Clark, head of Emirates, is in favour of a new London airport in the Thames estuary (News, last week). Clark is boss of an airline based in Dubai, a city that is building a 24-hour, six-runway airport that will open in 2015 as part of the Dubai World Centre project. The title reflects intent. Dubai’s plan is to become the hub that links the world’s biggest aviation market, North America, with its fastest-growing, Asia. And this link would bypass Europe altogether.

France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are all alive to this threat. They have invested in their hub airports, which now have four or five runways.

Cravenly, the UK has looked the other way. London has been permitted no new runways in 60 years, so Heathrow, the national hub, struggles along with two massively congested runways.

Emirates knows that the cleverest way of blocking expansion at Heathrow (where a third runway has already been under official consideration for six years) is to support a Thames estuary alternative. That way, Heathrow will decline for another decade or so until the policymakers finally admit that the offshore option is an unfundable fantasy and return their gaze to west London.

In the interim, the hugely expanded Emirates will be scooping up Heathrow’s and the UK's business. With shrivelling connectivity, London’s position as a global business capital will slump at the same rate.

Britain is sleepwalking towards the economic second division. While we debate how many seagulls can dance on the head of a runway light, Clark and the rest of the world laugh behind their hands.

Willie Walsh
British Airways

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