Hotel tycoon unveils rival £25bn plan to build Heathrow's third runway

Telegraph

5 days ago

Hotel magnate Surinder Arora has unveiled a plan to build a third runway at Heathrow that he claimed would save billions of pounds compared with the airport's own blueprint.
The proposals, drawn up with US civil engineering giant Bechtel, call for the construction of a 2.8km (1.7 mile) landing strip opening by 2035 at a cost of no more than £25bn.
While the runway would be 700m shorter than envisaged by Heathrow, limiting the size of jet able to take off, it would no longer require an expensive and complex diversion of the M25.
Mr Arora said: 'Building over the M25 at the busiest junction in Europe is complete madness. Can you imagine how disruptive it would be?
'We are offering the Government, the regulator and the airlines an alternative option which we believe would be a lot more efficient, less costly and quicker to deliver.'
Arora Group brought forward its plans after Mike Kane, the aviation minister, confirmed that the Government was open to outside proposals in a break from the previous approach.
Mr Arora is one of the biggest landowners at Heathrow through his eponymous property empire, which covers seven hotels around the airport.
He is pushing an alternative plan for a third runway amid fears that operators and passenger at the airport will end up bearing the cost of the development in the form of higher fees.
The property tycoon's plan would see the enlarged Heathrow able to handle about 750,000 flights a year, Mr Arora said, some 270,000 more than today and around the same number as proposed by the hub's owners under its own expansion plan.
The increase in capacity would depend on which planes airlines chose to operate from the truncated runway. In 2024 84m people used Heathrow.
The plan includes a new terminal that would be able to accommodate 40m more passengers. Heathrow itself envisages lifting capacity to 150m travellers a year.
Mr Arora said the 200-page blueprint for his 'Heathrow West' design would be submitted to the Department for Transport by the Thursday deadline set after Chancellor Rachel Reeves rekindled plans for a third runway.
His cost estimate does not include the redevelopment of the existing central area of Heathrow, which could add as much as £15bn to the bill.
Heathrow said it was preparing its own submission, expected to be based around plans backed by Parliament in 2018. It is understood that the proposal will continue to argue for the diversion of the M25, though Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow's chief executive, said last week that he was open to discussions should airlines and the government prefer a shorter, cheaper runway.
Full details of Heathrow's plans are expected to be made public on Friday.
Arora Group said the design drawn up by Bechtel, which led the development of the 65m-passenger Hamad International Airport in Qatar and helped expand Luton, would also reduce the environmental impact of the project.
The plan envisages the creation of a new Terminal 6 to be located just to the east of the M25 and opened in two phases in 2036 and 2040.
Sources close to Heathrow said the Arora Group proposals would require the runway to sit above the main access road from the M4, which cannot be lowered because of its proximity to rail infrastructure.
Mr Arora said the spur road was already sunk into the ground and that building over it would be a simple task.
The sources suggested that Arora's blueprint would also require the demolition of around 1,300 additional homes so that the strip could be extended to the east, at a cost of £500m.
International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent of British Airways, the largest carrier at Heathrow, said it would review both proposals but avoiding the need to cross the M25 'would remove complexity, reduce costs and help deliver better value for passengers.'
IAG said any expansion of Heathrow must be accompanied by reform of the charging model that determines the fees passed on to airlines and their customers, with the goal of avoiding 'significant increases.'