New mayor removes obstacle from London City Airport’s expansion path

London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, has dropped an objection raised by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, to the planned expansion of London City Airport (LCY).

The airport is located on a physically constrained site in the capital’s old Docklands district. Its owners have been trying for some time to expand it through a £300 million ($435 million) plan that would enlarge the terminal, create a parallel taxiway to make more efficient use of the single runway and expand the number of aircraft stands.

The eastern stands at LCY are already on a deck structure above the waters of the adjacent dock. The airport wants to extend this deck structure to create seven more stands, but this requires the airport’s owners to buy an area of land on the floor of the dock.

This land is owned by the Greater London Authority (GLA), and Johnson had refused permission for the purchase as part of his objections on noise and environmental grounds against expansion of LCY.

The airport had previously lodged a compulsory purchase order for the land in an attempt to force the issue and a governmental planning inquiry intended to resolve the impasse began May 10. However, Johnson came to the end of his term of office May 7 and Khan has now dropped the former mayor’s objection.

“The inquiry will continue, because there are other parties [apart from the GLA] involved in giving evidence, but the GLA was the main objector and we expect to be able to prepare the deal without resorting to a compulsory purchase order,” an LCY spokeswoman said.

The planning inspector conducting the inquiry is expected to write his report by late June. This will then be combined with the report from another planning inquiry into the overall principle of the airport’s expansion. The combined report will then go to government ministers for a decision, which should be delivered later this year.

LCY is a business-oriented airport close to the city’s Docklands financial district and popular with executives flying to western European financial centers. It also hosts a British Airways all-business class service to New York JFK.