Strategic plan on how to enhance the UK connections with the Asian market

Over the past decades, the British have been debating about how to improve their worldwide flight connections. The UK has spearheaded the global statistics concerning air traffic movements and passengers numbers for years. However, lately, the country is facing the capacity limitation on account of disabilities to expand the airport infrastructures. The two largest airports of the nation, Heathrow and Gatwick, both in London, are currently operating at the edge of their capacities. The little spare capacity of the overall London airports has triggered the rise of emerging markets, such as the Asia-Pacific and Middle-East, who have taken over the reins of the aviation industry. London airports overriding goal is to broaden their connections towards the key markets to ensure the country's economic growth and to preserve London's status as one of the world's capitals. To fulfil the demand requirements, one of the most controversial options has been the expan- sion proposal of Heathrow Airport with a third runway. Despite the forceful benefits for the country that would be derived from a new runway at Heathrow, the expansion plan would also bring about a severe environmental impact that would deteriorate London citizens quality of life. Besides, Heathrow location is surrounded by a densely populated area. This fact means a lot of advan- tages but entails a fundamental drawback, the difficulty to grow. Is Heathrow expansion the only solution to deal with the air traffic capacity constraints in the UK? What role could smaller airports like Gatwick or Stansted play in this event? The aim of this project is to asses the economic and environmental impact that would elicit the expansion of the three major London airports; London Heathrow, London Gatwick and London Stansted. From that, and based on a rigorous study of the future aviation trends and key markets demand requirements, the project suggests a strategic plan to deal with the need to boost the number of flights to the Far East. The project covers technical, environmental, economic, political and commercial aspects. Moreover, the paper includes a competition study and an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each airport expansion scheme, based on the boundary conditions established with the demand assessment. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of the results derived from the study and a brief overview of the noteworthy aspects learnt throughout project progress. Even though the posed problem does not have a unique solution, the author has opted for supporting one of the three expansion proposals, providing sufficient reasons to justify the selection