Flybe boss backs ‘Boris Island’ airport
02.07.11
The chief executive of budget airline Flybe, Jim French, has backed Boris Johnson's plan for a new London airport - the so called 'Boris Island' airport in the Thames Estuary - and attacked the Government for scrapping plans for a third runway at Heathrow. He said that London must add new airport capacity or Britain will lose billions of pounds of business to the rest of Europe.
Mr French told the Sun that the Government's decision to block plans for a third runway at Heathrow ‘delighted’ rivals in Europe. He said: ‘I was with Air France the day the decision was made. They were showing me where the fifth runway was going at Charles de Gaulle, and the sixth. Everyone in Europe is absolutely delighted with what our Government has done. They believe they can take traffic away from us. We can't look at the next 5 or 10 years. We have to look at where we'll be in the next 50 years. We have to put London back on the map.’
Mr Johnson has challenged the Government over approving the £40 billion Thames Estuary airport project. The Mayor said the scheme would be ‘the most powerful single statement we could make about the ambition of this country’. His favoured solution is an airport built on two platforms in the estuary connected to London via high-speed rail links. Planes would take off and land over the sea, solving the blight of aircraft noise and allowing the airport to operate around the clock.
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