Claims that airport expansion will help grow the UK economy should be treated with scepticism, according to a report that finds air travel does not increase productivity or growth.
Declining business travel and lower wages in aviation undermine claims made by the industry for the value of increased air connections, say researchers at the New Economics Foundation.
A report by the NEF due to be published this week says that despite booming air travel in the past few decades, only one in 12 flights in 2022 was taken for business purposes – half the proportion in 2013 – while the number of associated jobs was lower than in 2007. Wages fell faster in real terms between 2008 and 2022 than in any other UK sector.
Far more passengers are flying on holiday abroad than into the UK, with the NEF report finding a £32bn “travel deficit” in net spending between outbound and inbound tourism in 2019.
Airports around the UK are seeking to expand, despite the recommendation of the Climate Change Committee that there should be no additional capacity to meet the country’s 2050 net zero targets.
Britain’s biggest airport, Heathrow, has permission to build a third runway, although it says the plans are under review. Last week, Gatwick submitted an application to develop a second runway for full-time use. London City, Luton and Bristol are among other airports planning to expand, while terminal redevelopment at Manchester and Birmingham will also bring more passengers.
Gatwick says its growth plans would “inject £1bn into the region’s economy every year”, while Bristol claims that extra flights will create up to 5,000 jobs in the region and provide a £430m economic boost. According to government-endorsed figures in the Airports Commission’s report, Heathrow’s runway would add £61bn in growth over six decades.
But the NEF report suggests that since the government’s previous comprehensive assessment of the economics of air transport growth, “strong evidence, grounded in government data and academic research, suggests that the economic merit of expanding the UK’s air transport sector has diminished considerably”.
It recommends that the government pause all airport expansion until it has conducted a review of the economic evidence and compatibility with policies on climate change and levelling up.
Dr Alex Chapman, a senior researcher at the NEF, said: “[The government has] let the air travel industry balloon in size, based on dangerously outdated claims that it is boosting the UK’s economy. The reality is declining business air travel, declining wages for air travel workers, declining job numbers, and declining domestic tourism spending in the UK. And that’s before you consider the rise in noise, air pollution and dangerous emissions.”
He said the beneficiaries were “the highly paid executives, the private shareholders and the wealthy minority of ultra-frequent flyers”.
