Mayor’s plans ‘will hit jobs’ at Heathrow

London Evening Standard/London

Heathrow stepped up its campaign for a third runway yesterday by warning 63,000 local jobs would face the axe if a new superhub airport was built in Britain.

Aviation bosses claim Heathrow would be forced to close if a new four-runway airport was created in the Thames Estuary or at Stansted, as the main hub for the South-East.

In its latest submission to the Davies Commission on the UK’s airport needs, Heathrow outlined a borough-by-borough breakdown of what it says could be the job losses if it shuts.

Worst hit would be Hounslow, with 10,750 workers at Heathrow who could see their job disappear. Unemployment could spiral locally from 8% to 16% according to the airport’s ‘Best Placed for Britain’ paper.

An extra 9,500 posts in Hounslow in industries linked to the airport could also go, the report claims — taking the total of jobs at risk in just one borough to more than 20,000.

Hillingdon could also be badly affected, with 9,000 Heathrow employees in the borough at risk of losing work — hiking unemployment to 15%. A further 7,950 airport-related jobs at stake, according to the analysis.

Nearly 11,000 posts would be in danger in Ealing, more than 7,000 in Spelthorne and nearly 8,000 in Slough.

Campaigners against expansion at the west London airport are likely to argue that the estimate of job losses is exaggerated. However, Heathrow also says that a third runway — and the opening of Crossrail in 2019 to boost rail links to the airport — would help to regenerate the east of the capital far quicker than a £70bn “Boris island” superhub with four runways in the Thames Estuary.

Heathrow bosses say that with Crossrail, it will be 41 minutes from Stratford; 40 minutes from Canary Wharf; and 36 minutes from Whitechapel.