The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Can Luton ever compete with Gatwick?
It looked like the end of the road for the expansion of Britain’s fifth-busiest airport. A huge fire ripped through a multistorey car park at Luton airport earlier this month, disrupting travel for thousands of passengers. Some 130 flights were cancelled and others severely delayed. If Luton couldn’t manage a car park, how could it handle a big increase in jets and passengers, critics wondered?
But the Government has other views. It has finally approved the airport’s planning application to increase its annual passenger cap from 18 million to 19 million passengers. Alberto Martin, the chief executive of London Luton Airport, says expansion “makes best use of the current infrastructure without the need for additional construction” and “ensures the continued recovery of the airport following the pandemic”.
Can an airport often lampooned in popular culture (younger readers, please Google “Lorraine Chase Luton Airport Campari”) now transform itself ?
It is making progress. What used to be the most infuriatingly difficult airport to get to is now much easier to reach. The £261 million Luton Direct Air-Rail Transit (Luton Dart) means passengers no longer have to take an uncomfortable, expensive bus from Luton Airport Parkway Station to Terminal 1 but can instead board a snazzy train that gets you there in four minutes. It means passengers can travel to Luton from St Pancras in just over half an hour, rivalling travel times to Heathrow and Gatwick from central London.
Some £30million is being invested in Terminal 1 to cope with the increase in passengers. An £8million two-storey restaurant for 500 diners will open next year. A £20 million refurbishment of the airport’s security hall is already under way. New body scanners will speed up processing times and new hold baggage X-ray machines will help meet peak-hour demand.
But there could be more. Much more. The airport’s owner, Luton Rising, which is itself owned by Luton Borough Council, is applying to increase passenger numbers to 32 million a year – a 30 per cent hike. That would mean a brand new Terminal 2.
Under the group’s plans, new gate space and remote stands would enable the airport to handle 28 Airbus A320s and several large Boeing 777s at a time. A new, second taxiway parallel to the existing one would help link the runway with a new T2 apron.
Local residents and MPs have complained about the expansion plans. Pete White, who lives close to the airport, says: “It’s the worst thing that could ever happen for east Luton, because noise will increase not only from the aircraft but from the traffic.”
Large expansion is not the answer, he argues. “Use what you’ve got, use it sensibly, use it wisely, make it an income stream for the town – growing the airport isn’t going to do those things.”
Andrew Lambourne, a spokesman for local protest group Luton and District Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise, adds: “Before you make Luton Airport bigger, make it better.”
He said the noise increase would rob people who live on the flightpath of sleep and would be “bad for their health and wellbeing”. Luton Rising says it will pay for sound insulation in households affected by noise above a certain level.
One thing is certain. Luton is set to grow. The only question is by how much and whether it will become large enough to convince users that its preferred moniker – London Luton – no longer stretches the conventions of geography too far.
John Arlidge