The chief executive of Heathrow airport has called on the UK government to move faster if Britain’s main hub airport is to meet a 2029 deadline to begin construction of its third runway.
Thomas Woldbye said ministers should introduce new rules to speed up planning approval, as the airport said it had begun work on its formal application for the £33 billion (€38 billion) project.
“As I said to the chancellor when we started, we have to look at doing things differently. If we do it the way we have always done it we’ll probably get the same result [of long delays],” he said.
“A government infrastructure and planning bill is coming. We would hope more is coming our way which would make it easier, make a real difference to the timelines,” he added. “There is stuff that can be done. It’s all within the realistic bounds of possibility, but it needs to be done.”
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The demand is likely to be closely watched by Aer Lingus parent IAG. The Dublin-Heathrow route is the second busiest in Europe with 2.35 million seats, according to consultancy OAG. Those seats are supplied entirely by Aer Lingus and British Airways.
The UK’s biggest airport said on Thursday it had started work on a planning application for the third runway project after ministers late last year approved its proposal, which involves moving part of the M25 London orbital motorway.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves – who has said the expansion will boost economic growth – has set a timeline of beginning construction work by 2029, the expected date of the next general election.
The third runway is due to be operational by the mid-2030s – a date considered highly ambitious by the industry.
Woldbye said ministers in Sir Keir Starmer’s government “have done more than ever before and in a shorter time ... We need to keep that speed, and we need government authorities to be 100 per cent aligned.”
The airport would start increasing its team on the project, even though it was waiting on several official approvals that would take months, he added.
“If we don’t get going now we cannot protect that [2029] deadline,” said Woldbye, in post since October 2023. “We do that with quite some risk – lots of stuff has not been cleared yet – that needs to be determined.”
Outstanding issues include long-term regulation that will determine how much of its construction costs Heathrow will be allowed to recoup from airlines, and parliamentary approval of the Airports National Policy Statement, or ANPS, an important planning policy document.
A decision by the Civil Aviation Authority, the industry regulator, on changes to Heathrow’s regulatory model – something backed by airlines – is expected by the summer, while a House of Commons vote on the ANPS scheme is due in the second half of the year.
“Arguably we should wait until we have that in place. Other airports would say that, but they are not as capacity pressed as we are. They do not have the same urgency,” Woldbye said.
The costs of funding Heathrow’s planning approval would run into the hundreds of millions of pounds and could be immediately financed by its cash flows, he added.
The airport has said it will fund the entire project privately, although airlines have warned that costs will ultimately be borne by passengers through higher landing charges.
Heathrow has estimated that the runway will cost £21 billion, with another £12 billion to be spent on new infrastructure including a new terminal.
The amounts are on top of the £10 billion it plans to spend on other projects between 2027 and 2031, a programme of expenditure that is being discussed with the CAA.
Airlines, from which Heathrow is allowed to recoup its costs through the landing fees, have warned that any cost overruns in the expansion programme may make the airport too expensive. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
