London City Airport rolls out ambitious expansion plans but no mention of resurrection of Silvertown line or NYC flights
London City Airport has published details of its proposed expansion plans backed up by a 10-week consultation process.
No mention is given to the potential resurrection of the old North London Line Silvertown for London City station which the new Elizabeth Line passes by, nor the possibility of non-stop flights from LCY to JFK (New York Kennedy). Or an approach to the CAA for a very limited runway extension.
The airport expects to welcome three million passengers this year and is predicting a return to pre-pandemic passenger numbers (2019) of five million, as soon as 2024, according to a Business Travel News (BTN) report.
The consultation outlines how the airport can meet future demand of up to nine million passengers by 2031, by making best use of its existing runway and infrastructure, in line with its 2020 master plan and the UK Government’s aviation policy.
LCY is inviting views on additional flexibility to operate on a Saturday afternoon and evening, as well as additional elasticity in the first and last half hour of daily operations (06:30−07:00 and 22:00−22:30). No increase to the current annual limit on flights is proposed.
In order to meet its targets of achieving 80 per cent of journeys to and from the airport by sustainable transport modes, no additional car parking is proposed either.
Whether the DLR, already crowded at peak times, can cope with the nearly doubling of passenger numbers is not mentioned.
Amsterdam (AMS) is currently the airport’s busiest route and British Airways (BA) the major operator with over 50 per cent of aircraft movements.
With the withdrawal of the Avro 146, BA’s largest aircraft is the Embraer E190. Both the later Airbus 220-100 and Embraer E2 can carry more passengers which will help the airport achieving its target figure, BTN reported.