Sir Howard Davies sets out his stall

Eight weeks after being appointed by the Government to head up the ‘Airports Commission’, Sir Howard Davies today [2 November 2012] announced the other members of his team and provided details of how the Commission intends to go about its work.

These announcements were made to an all-invitation gathering of representatives from the aviation industry, business, environmental groups and local community groups – including Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) Chairman, Peter Sanders, and Economics Adviser, Brian Ross.

The Airports Commission has been asked by the Government to examine the issue of UK airport capacity and to make recommendations and Sir Howard Davies made clear that his first task will be to look at the long term demand forecasts for air travel. He said that he hoped to produce a paper on the demand forecasts by next January.

SSE welcomed this approach and, in discussions with SSE immediately after the meeting, Sir Howard Davies agreed that, if the demand forecasts indicated that no additional runways were needed, his Commission would have the much easier task of simply trying to make better use of the existing airport capacity.

SSE also welcomed Sir Howard Davies’ commitment to publish on the Commission’s website (which has not yet been set up) all the evidence it receives, as the inquiry goes along, and to allow other parties an opportunity to comment on it.

The Airports Commission is due to produce its interim report by the end of 2013 and its final report by the summer of 2015.