London Gatwick has formally submitted plans for a £2.2bn second runway, as the airport looks to double its passenger numbers to 75 million a year.
Gatwick said the planned runway would generate 14,000 jobs and bring a £1bn annual boost to the region.
Campaigners said the additional flights would significantly worsen noise and air pollution, as well as carbon emissions, from the airport.
The Sussex airport’s 30,000-page application for a development consent order to convert its standby runway for routine use was lodged with the Planning Inspectorate on Thursday. The process is expected to take about a year before it reaches the transport secretary for final approval.
Stewart Wingate, Gatwick’s chief executive, said the scheme would “help secure the long-term future of the airport and economic prosperity” in the region.
“If approved, our plan will also improve airport resilience, meet future passenger demand, and increase competition in the London airport market, by providing vital new international connections,” he added.
The project will convert a taxiway used as an emergency runway by moving its centreline 12 metres north, allowing planes to take off while others come in to land on the existing runway.
Most construction will be within the airport perimeter, bar stretches of additional local road lanes and flyovers, and Gatwick has said it hopes work will start in 2025 for the runway to be in use by 2030.
With a decision potentially landing just before or after a general election, Wingate said the plan should “stand on its own merits irrespective of party politics”. He insisted the plan met current government policy of “maximising the use of existing runways”, and was compatible with the “jet zero” ambition for net zero flying by 2050.
However, the airport has lost significant support from key political figures and last week the committee on climate change urged the government to pause any further airport expansion to meet the UK’s 2050 net zero commitments.
A spokesperson for the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who was previously a vocal backer of Gatwick’s plans, said he was “committed to making London net zero by 2030 and reducing air pollution. The aviation sector needs to play a part in this and not undermine our efforts to achieve this goal.
“The mayor fails to see how any airport expansion can be justified if it is incompatible with tackling the climate crisis and achieving our net zero targets.”
Gatwick said regional opinion was now largely supportive, with a YouGov poll suggesting 78% of people in surrounding counties being in favour of the plans.
Tim Norwood, Gatwick’s development director, said the perception had shifted during the pandemic, when the airport was largely closed and the neighbouring town of Crawley was labelled the “furlough capital of the UK”. He added: “People realised they needed Gatwick to thrive – we do rely on a lot of local residents to work at the airport, they say we need Gatwick for the area and jobs.”
Despite some pledges by the airport to mitigate noise, Peter Barclay, the chair of the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign, said the local impacts would be “devastating”, and accused the airport of continuing to “push for unsustainable growth simply to benefit its shareholders”.
Sally Pavey, of the Communities Against Gatwick Noise and Emissions group, said the airport was seeking to get a second runway “through the back door” after the Airports Commission judged only Heathrow should expand. She added that Gatwick’s expansion would add more than a million tonnes of carbon emissions a year.
Wingate said after the decision, Gatwick had “dusted itself down and looked to maximise the use of its existing facilities”. Norwood said its the airport’s carbon dioxide emissions would rise by 16% after the expansion.
Alex Chapman, a senior researcher at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, estimated the additional cost of emissions from expansion to be £13bn.
He said: “The primary function of Gatwick is to send British tourists overseas, encouraging them to spend money abroad. When you consider how much carbon emissions are going to cost us in the future, the economics of ballooning air travel don’t stack up.”
