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Independent Online Edition > Business News: "BAA 'inflating figures' to justify extra runway
By Michael Harrison, Business Editor
Published: 05 July 2006
Stansted airport's biggest users claimed yesterday that its owner, BAA, had massively overestimated future passenger demand to justify spending nearly �3bn on a second runway.
The Stansted Airline Consultative Committee, a coalition of passenger and cargo airlines and travel bodies such as IATA, said BAA had deliberately chosen to 'gold plate' the project and inflate traffic forecasts so that it could maximise landing charges at the airport to pay for the runway.
The committee, which includes Stansted's two biggest airlines, Ryanair and easyJet, said a second runway, terminal building and associated facilities could be built at Stansted for about �1bn - a third of the �2.7bn that BAA is proposing to spend. With new surface transport links, the total cost could be �4bn.
A report prepared for the committee by the airport consultants York Aviation says passenger numbers at Stansted will rise from 22 million a year to up 62 million by 2030, assuming airport charges remained at current levels. If they increased by the amount that BAA proposes from �3.30 a passenger to more than �8 then demand by 2030 would fall to 49 million passengers. That compares with BAA's forecast that 78 million passengers would be using Stansted's two runways by 2030.
BAA plans to bring the second runway into service by 2015. But the committee says that based on its calculations, Stansted would have sufficient capacity with its existing single runway until 2020. If BAA went ahead with its proposed increase in charges, it would depress passenger demand, meaning a second runway would not be needed until 2028.
BAA is being taken over by the Spanish construction group Ferrovial"