Michael Stephen, chairman of the UK’s Severnside Airport consortium, recently told EBAN of his opposition to BAA’s submission for further runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. “BAA is obviously blind to all public feeling and opposition to airport expansion in the South East. Building Severnside would siphon off a lot of traffic from the existing London airports.” The proposed airfield would be located

in the Severn Estuary near Newport, South Wales.

Stephen is confident that the airfield will also attract business aviation. “There’s a charter company in the region which has expressed an interest in operating out of Severnside. There will certainly be facilities for business aviation down there and it will then be up to operators to forward proposals. Something that might be attractive to us would be a service operating between London City Airport and Severnside, which would enable businessmen to catch long-haul flights to the US without going through the maelstrom of Heathrow Airport. So far we haven’t had talks with the airport or the Jet Centre, but we would be more than happy to do so. We can see them acting as an excellent feeder airport for the high value passenger and freight traffic which emanates from the square mile [London City’s financial district],” he said

There will be no limit to the size of aircraft that will be able to fly in and out of the airport, as a 4,000 metre runway is planned. Stephen said: “The most heavily laden aircraft will be able to take off under any weather conditions here. At the moment the development is in the political phase and the government is consulting on where it should authorise the construction of new airports or additional runways at existing airports.

“We’ve put in a 92-page submission to [UK transport secretary] Alistair Darling, which makes the case for building Severnside. It’s envisaged as an intercontinental hub airport for the whole of southern Britain. We want to offer an alternative so people aren’t drawn unnecessarily into the London area by car or train, because it’s already desperately overcrowded, as are the skies over the south east of England.”