June 2008 Archives

Suppose you'd been appointed to run London's three big airports, at a time when your company had become a kind of PR joke, and your biggest customers wanted that company to be forcibly broken up....what would you say? New BAA CEO Colin Matthews gave his first big speech today and he chose to say this. Boy does he want that third Heathrow runway!


Matthews, correctly I think, homes in on the critical issue of the value that Heathrow's role as a hub, with its associated transit traffic, brings to the UK. Or doesn't bring. That's the question.

Regular readers will know it's an article of faith for me that improved air traffic management is the only way that aviation is going to improve its environmental act to any meaningful extent in the near future. Part of that needs to be the widespread adoption of what's called required navigation performance (RNP) techniques. And it's starting to happen.