The world’s biggest passenger jet will swoop into Heathrow for the first time on March 18, heralding a new era in air travel. The Airbus A380 is a double-decker “super-jumbo” ready to fly you to the future – but it will be landing at an airport mired in the past.

Heathrow, the busiest international airport on the planet, has become a byword for misery and chaos. Last month it was found to have the highest number of flight delays in Europe, with more than a third of aircraft suffering problems.

To compound the pain, British Airways, Heathrow’s largest carrier, has one of the worst records for lost luggage, according to the Association of European Airlines.

Though the Queen will open Heathrow’s £4.3 billion terminal five on March 27, bringing more check-in space and luxury shops, it will serve only BA customers and won’t alleviate the congestion in the skies. Airbus reckons Heathrow will eventually be serving 90 super-jumbos a day.

Yesterday a former senior executive of a leading airline summed up the mess. “The bottom line is that it’s a third world airport,” he said. “It’s a national disgrace.”

By contrast, that first A380 flight will have come from Changi airport in Singapore, whose history is the antithesis of the UK’s main hub. When Singapore’s old airport became overcrowded, the city-state government had a choice: continue to expand the existing site, which was hemmed in by urban development, or build a new airport from scratch.

Officials chose the latter and Changi rapidly rose out of land partly reclaimed from the sea. The new airport, which opened in 1981, has proved a huge success, winning almost 300 passenger service awards.

The same dilemma now faces Britain. Should the government keep adding to Heathrow, which has grown piecemeal for 60 years while urbani-sation has hemmed it in all around? Or is it time for bolder solutions?

Ministers and BAA, the private company that runs the airport, seem intent on expanding Heathrow by building a third runway and sixth terminal by 2020. The move would see the number of flights soar by 40% – more than 200,000 extra flights a year over London.

The proposals have provoked uproar. On Wednesday, the deadline for a government consultation on the third runway, five members of the pressure group Plane Stupid bypassed security at parliament and took their protest to the roof of the House of Commons as Gordon Brown arrived for Prime Minister’s Questions.

Thousands of residents in west London, faced with more pollution, congestion and noise, have attended meetings to oppose the plans. The normally mild-mannered National Trust has spoken against the proposals. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, has accused sham-bolic Heathrow of “shaming” the capital, and the London Assembly is opposed to a third runway.

Into the political confusion stepped Boris Johnson, the Tory mayoral candidate. It was time, he said, to reconsider plans for a brand new airport to the east of London in the Thames estuary. Johnson, who will launch his transport manifesto tomorrow (though it will concentrate on roads and trains rather than airports), said: “If you look at what is going on in other countries around the world – in Hong Kong, in Washington – it’s not impossible to move the capital’s biggest airport.”

For inspiration showing what is possible, look east. Beijing last week opened a giant airport terminal that could house all five of Heathrow’s terminals put together. The Norman Foster-designed building will increase capacity from 35m passengers to 85m – and the Chinese are looking for a site for a second new airport.

Meanwhile, the Gulf emirate of Dubai plans to open a monster six-runway “air resort” – complete with golf course and beach – in 2015.

Some environmental campaigners oppose all new airports; but expansion seems inevitable, especially if technological innovation reduces environmental damage from emissions. So if Britain is to meet the demands of future aviation, can it keep tacking extra runways onto existing sites? Or should it think altogether more radi-cally? What are the alternatives to expanding hellish Heathrow? AN entirely new airport was once the authorities’ preferred option. In 1971 the Conservative government decided that Maplin Sands, off the south Essex coast in the Thames estuary, was a suitable site. Although the scheme met with objections from bird-watchers and conservationists, it was killed off three years later primarily because of a shortage of funds.

Nevertheless, similar proposals have persisted. When the current government drew up its long-term aviation strategy in 2003, it was still considering a variety of new sites close to the Thames. The schemes included a £9 billion (at 2003 costings) two-runway operation at Goodwin Sands on the east coast of Kent, as well as an ambitious four-runway hub built on an artificial island three miles out from the Isle of Sheppey.

Such sites have a huge advantage over Heathrow: located away from residential areas, they open up new airspace and potentially allow flights to take off and land 24 hours a day.

“If you located an airport properly in the Thames estuary, virtually all the flight movements would be over the North Sea,” said Sir Peter Hall, president of the Town and Country Planning Association. “There would be no constraints on development at all.”

At present air traffic controllers have to handle 1.4m flights a year over London. Often the distance between aircraft is at the minimum safe level. Expansion of existing airports will mean more flights and stacking over residential areas.

At the end of this month a new aviation agreement, known as Open Skies, will scrap restrictions on routes, generating more transatlantic flights and new routes to and from Europe. It all adds up to a booming industry. What are the drawbacks of a new site to the east?

A KEY hurdle for all the schemes has been their accessibility from central London. “Airports are not just runways; they are runways with the transport infrastructure around them,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of economics at Oxford University specialising in transport and infrastructure. “You can have an airport anywhere if you’re prepared to put in a bullet train that goes from it to your urban centre.

“But what we are appallingly bad at in the UK is any form of integrated transport strategy. If Maplin Sands had been built in the 1970s, how would people have got there from London? The answer would have been the A12.” However, high-speed rail links are now a reality. One new airport proposal given serious consideration by ministers was located at Cliffe, on the Hoo peninsula in north Kent. A short new line could have connected it to the high-speed Channel Tunnel rail link, allowing travellers to get into central London in 26 minutes.

Costing some £13.3 billion for four runways, such an airport could handle 113m passengers a year, compared with the 67m passengers now served by Heathrow.

Officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) concluded that the airport “could attract a substantial number of passengers and generate large economic benefits”.

Another scheme, called Thames Reach, envisaged an offshore airport close to the Cliffe site. It would involve building a £2 billion tunnel beneath the Thames to allow passengers to connect with London’s planned east-west Crossrail link.

Such schemes are ambitious and expensive, and Cliffe was rejected on the grounds of high construction costs and the destruction of wildlife habitats.

But given that the cost of a new terminal and runway at Heathrow is put at up to £13 billion, the obstacles are more a matter of political will than financial or technological challenge.

True, there were serious concerns about bird strikes damaging aircraft on take-off and landing at Cliffe. And Steve Norris, the former Tory transport minister, is sceptical about Thames Reach. “You’d turn Crossrail into nothing more than an airport railway,” he said. “There would be virtually no room for the traffic for which Crossrail was originally planned.”

But one of the biggest hurdles to breaking the Heathrow stranglehold remains the array of vested interests centred on the existing system.

The government seems set on adding new runways at Stansted and Heathrow, with Gatwick possibly being allowed to build a second runway after 2019. All those airports are operated by BAA – which also owns Southampton, Edin-burgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports. It has led some critics to question its “cosy relationship” with the government.

Last October Tom Kelly, former official spokesman for Tony Blair, joined BAA to head its communications strategy. A former director of public affairs at BAA has become a special adviser to Gordon Brown, and several key Labour officials have worked for BAA or pro-aviation lobby groups.

“BAA and government haveregularly been in bed together over the past 15 years, with BAA seeming to take the role of the dominant partner,” said John Stewart, chairman of Hacan, a pressure group representing residents under the Heathrow flightpath.Antiexpansion campaignershave even accused the two parties of “rigging” the Heathrow consultation, citing minutes of meetings obtained under the Freedom of Information Act which suggest that BAA closely worked with the DfT to “sell” the proposals to the public.

Those proposals may suit BAA, which makes a fortune from corralling passengers at airports where they have nothing to do but shop; but they are unlikely to relieve the horrors of Heathrow.

The government had originally envisaged a second runway at Stansted by 2012, although the timeframe for this appears to have slipped. It would increase capacity at the Essex airport from 24m passengers a year to up to 68m.

But experts believe the expansion would do little to solve capacity constraints on Heathrow. This is because Stansted mainly serves low-cost airlines, such as Ryanair, flying shorthaul European routes. Other airlines, catering for different markets, would still concentrate on Heathrow.

WOULD better transport links to London help? Stansted was originally conceived as a four-runway airport, so connecting it to the capital with a high-speed rail link could alter its dynamic and ease the pressure.

Yet the government remains intent on concentrating on Heathrow. Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, has made it clear that “fundamentally we need a global hub airport” – and that, in the government’s view, means expanding Heathrow.

It claims the economic benefit of a third runway would be around £5 billion a year. Critics, including the environment committee of the London Assembly, believe the figure has been exaggerated.

What is clear is that the regulatory regime and BAA’s financial interests help to maintain the status quo. The landing charges BAA demands of airlines at Heathrow are linked to the revenue it generates from its retail activities on the site.

Livingstone once accused the airport operator of keeping passengers “almost as prisoner in this ghastly shopping mall so they can extract vast sums of money ... in appalling conditions”. The more money thatBAA makes from leasing space to shops and restaurants, the lower it can set its landing charges. “This produces the bizarre outcome that one of the most congested airports in the world has some of the lowest landing charges,” said one academic expert.

Stephen Nelson, who is stepping down as chief executive of BAA, has said that a third runway at Heathrow may not be enough. A fourth may later be required to meet demand.

Last week up to 2,500 angry residents, environmental campaigners and politicians gathered at Central Hall in Westminster in the biggest rally so far to oppose the third runway at Heathrow. If it were to go ahead, it would wipe out the village of Sipson, destroying about 700 properties.

“I found out on my 50th birthday that I was going to have a major road 10ft from my back door,” said Christine Taylor from Harlington. “My life is going to be completelyshattered if these plans go ahead.”The discontent spreadsfar wider than those who stand to see their property demolished or blighted. In Hammer-smith, Chiswick and other areas of west London, public meetings have been thronged by residents horrified at the thought of thousands more planes flying overhead.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that expansion of the airport is a massive vote loser,” said Norris, whose Quality of Life Commission for the Conservatives has called for a moratorium on airport expansion.

Justine Greening, Tory MP for Putney, said: “Like it or not, we are going to have to look at other options. A responsible government cannot just bury its head in the sand.”

Aviation experts agree that the Heathrow site is far from ideal. “Unlike almost every major airport in every major city in the world, the prevailing wind flightpath takes aircraft right over the centre of London,” said David Learmount, operations editor of Flight International magazine. “From that point of view Heathrow has always been an appalling idea.”

ONLY a powerful political lead will overcome the inertia generated by the existing infrastructure and vested interests. For a new airport in the east to succeed would probably require the closure or severe restriction of Heathrow.

That is the lesson from Mon-treal, where the authorities built a new airport for the Olympics in 1976 while keeping the existing one in operation. After the games, people carried on using the old airport at Dorval because it was closer to the city centre, leaving the new one to become a white elephant.

But it’s not too late to change course. BAA’s stranglehold is under review. The structure of the airport operator is being investigated by the Competition Commission, which could lead to the break-up of the operator’s monopoly in the south-east. If the government can back the spending of £9 billion or more on the Olympics, why not support a new airport?“

The brutal reality is that athird runway at Heathrow will only buy London time,” said Matthias Hamm, a director of Thames Reach airport. “Ultimately, the government has got to step up to the plate and find an alternative long-term solution to airport capacity forUK citizens.” Or they may well look back and think –as some now look back on the plans for Maplin, Cliffe or Goodwin Sands – that it would have been better to have seized the opportunity for a new airport earlier.

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