Heathrow will announce plans for an extra 25,000 flights a year to increase capacity before the opening of a third runway.
The airport wants to accommodate the equivalent of 68 more take-offs and landings a day within the next few years, scrapping the limit imposed as a planning condition when Heathrow won approval to build Terminal 5 in 2001. Annual flight numbers could exceed 500,000 for the first time.
The plans will be outlined in a public consultation next week. For the first time Heathrow will show the broad position of new flight paths to be used when it grows by 50 per cent over the next decade. Changes are also planned to the positioning of incoming aircraft using existing runways. The airport will proceed with a proposed ban on night flights when a third runway is built.
Residents in west London will be angered by the increase in flights, which Heathrow wants irrespective of a third runway. There are fears of a rise in arrivals and departures early in the day, when demand for landing slots is high. […]
It wants to build a two-mile runway to its northwest as part of a £14 billion project to allow the airport to grow from a maximum of 480,000 flights a year now, to 740,000.