British Airways Unreformed !

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British Airways proved that they are totally unreformed at the Royal Aeronautical Society Brabazon Lecture, on 13 Nov 06. In a lecture entitled ‘The Future of Heathrow’ the Chief Executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, cited unproven economic benefits for expanding Heathrow and sidelined the environmental impacts.

Nic Ferriday, West London Friends of the Earth, commented: “It seems that all the recent publicity about climate change and the economic impacts highlighted by the Stern report have passed BA by. There are utterly unreformed, still thinking that they and the aviation industry can continue with ‘business as usual’ while paying lip service to the environment. They are still coming up with the usual unproven claims about the economic benefits of expanding Heathrow and they are still ignoring the environmental impacts.”

The lecture played upon the worst aspects of chauvinism, ie Heathrow is world’s “leading” airport and we will lose out to competition if it doesn’t expand. Heathrow is inefficient, crowded and gives a bad impression to foreigners. Huge economic benefits will be foregone as business decamps abroad if Heathrow is not expanded. No evidence was given for this. Especially the official statistics which show that aviation and tourism take far more money out of the country than they bring in!

Other claims made by Willie Walsh included:

Aviation only accounts for 6% of UK emissions of greenhouse gases leading to climate change. (This only refers to carbon dioxide. The emission of water vapour and nitrogen oxides – NOx - at altitude means that the climate impact is between 2 and 4 times as great as for carbon dioxide alone.)

BA measurements show that NO2 is declining and that hardly any households would be outside limits. (This is not borne out by other parties’ measurements which use officially authorised measurement methods.)

‘Mixed mode’ would reduce CO2 and NOx emissions. (Clearly a 15-20% increase in aircraft movements will increase emissions, not reduce them.)

There is room for a third runway at Heathrow. (There is not room at Heathrow. That is why the government is proposing a third runway half a mile to the north of Heathrow, devastating the villages of Harlington, Sipson and Harmondsworth.)

The White Paper is not ‘predict and provide’. (It clearly is – the White Paper is based on unconstrained forecasts of growth and proposes new runway capacity to meet the great majority of this growth.

Aviation is the only industry that pays for its infrastructure. (Roads are paid for several times over by taxes on lorries, cars and their fuel.)

He is encouraged by Stern report which says we can be green and grow the economy at the same time. (Stern did not say that we can be green and grow aviation as he would like.)

Willie Walsh gave BA’s timetable for provision of a third runway:
• Late 07 – government decision to proceed
• 2008 – 480k pa cap on flights abolished
• 2010 – BAA puts in planning application
• 2013 – decision
• 2015 – R3 opens
He didn’t explain why we need all this if the government has already decided to go ahead!

Nic Ferriday commented “BA may have a new Chief Executive, but nothing has changed. We are still hearing all the usual spin and misinformation about the social, economic and environmental impacts of Heathrow expansion. It is time we had an independent inquiry into these issues instead of phoney studies commissioned by the aviation industry.”

Links

Heathrow introduction
Climate cost of Heathrow over £700 million
Climate introduction

(Nov 06)