Heathrow airport chief sees runway debate shift to ‘how, not if’

Woldbye upbeat as UK chancellor John Healey reiterates government support for third runway at London hub.
London Heathrow airport chief Thomas Woldbye believes the focus should move to how, rather than if, a third runway is built, as UK chancellor John Healey reiterated government support for the expansion.

The debate around a third runway at Heathrow has been raging for decades and through various different governments and political U-turns. The incoming Labour government under then-chancellor Rachel Reeves last year threw its weight behind Heathrow Airport Limited’s [HAL’s] proposal to construct a 3,500m runway – though another proposal for a shorter 2,800m runway proposed by Arora Group is also on the table.

However, with the new prime minister Andy Burnham seemingly more ambivalent towards a third runway at Heathrow, combined with ongoing concerns over whether expansion would be consistent with the country’s climate change targets, doubts about the project going ahead persist.

Government backs Heathrow expansion

But Healey told a Parliamentary Transport Select Committee on 11 November that the government is behind a third runway at Heathrow.

Speaking later that day during the Airlines 2026 conference in London, Heathrow chief executive Woldbye was encouraged by Healey’s comments.

“I think this country needs a third runway more than ever before and when I look at the policies the new government has set up around growth, education, investments and innovation, this project does that,” he says.

“I am convinced we can do this and I am determined to do it,” Woldbye adds. “There is such strong support that I think momentum will mean we will get to the right decision at the right time.”

And he believes the nature of the discussion around the project has shifted over the past two years.

“We are not now discussing ‘if’, we are discussing ‘how’. That is the discussion I think we should have had all along,” he says.

Speaking earlier at the same event, British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle again gave his backing for a third runway, if delivered “the right way” with “competitive airport charges”.

Woldbye says: “Of course it has to be affordable in the right way. If it’s not, then it won’t happen. It has to add value.

“There are lots of things you can do, but I think we have never really properly had that discussion because we have been too distracted by the conversation, ‘are we going to do this or not’. Now we are going to do it, let’s sit down and see how we are going to do this.”

Woldbye would not be drawn on when the airport would formally commit to the third runway, noting there are ongoing processes to complete, including the Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement on which the government launched a consultation in the summer.

“We have said given the right conditions, we are happy to build a third runway and our investors are happy to invest in it. And that is where we still are,” says Woldbye.

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