Business travel consortium says Gatwick expansion ‘too little too late’

Focus Travel Partnership wants faster expansion of UK airports

The Focus Travel Partnership says the confirmation of expansion at Gatwick Airport is ‘too little too late’ for the business travel sector.

The consortium welcomed news of a £2.2 billion second runway project being confirmed by transport secretary Heidi Alexander – but said the government’s attitude to airport infrastructure and capacity ‘remains stubbornly hesitant’.

“An industry worth £20 billion per year and supporting 230,000 jobs shouldn’t have to celebrate the release of an emergency runway at Gatwick as if it was the answer to the much-needed expansion of national capacity,” said Paul Spencer, managing director of Focus Travel Partnership.

Spencer criticised the ‘timid approach’ of governments to airport infrastructure growth since the regional expansion of the 1980s and 1990s.

Despite the transformation of an emergency runway into a second permanent runway creating room for an additional 100,000 flights a year, Spencer said the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) would remain under pressure with forecasts that the UK could expect three million flights a year by 2030, up from 1.9 million in 2023.

Speaking for the travel management company (TMC) partners of Focus Travel Partnership, which spend more than £1.3 billion on business travel each year, Spencer added: “Our transport policy, particularly post-Brexit, should focus more aggressively on the positive aspects of international air travel - and its impact to trade with the UK and to investment in the UK.

“Concerns about the environment, sustainability and even noise are being actively addressed by the sector with innovations in aircraft design, fuel and flight planning – and the thousands of British business clients our partners service are entirely supportive of such considerations.”

Spencer said artificial intelligence will not replace the need for human interaction in business meetings, noting how engineers, project managers, financiers, creatives and entrepreneurs ‘get on a plane at six in the morning to strike deals in boardrooms across every continent’.

He added: “With hundreds of years of international trading history, and a connected world that still values face to face interaction with British talent… government policy mustn’t hold back from actively promoting airport expansion and development as a source of economic growth. And faster than is currently proposed.”