The question of London’s congested Heathrow hub airport remains obstinately alive on the political agenda. Could Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol or Frankfurt airport offer business travellers better connections?

Heathrow runs at nearly full capacity and is pretty well unavoidable for government officials travelling beyond Europe, for social workers escorting children to countries of origin, for economic development officers seeking investment from burgeoning emerging economies and, in fact, for any business traveller seeking an onward connection not available from their regional airport.

Well, they are likely to be waiting a very long time for extra capacity at Heathrow, whose problems appear insoluble as all three main political parties now oppose its expansion.

Moving some flights to other London airports might make a small difference, while more radical solutions – such as an airport on an artificial island in the Thames estuary airport touted by London mayor Boris Johnson – would take years and be grossly expensive.

Only 18 months after the coalition scrapped Labour’s plan for a third runway at Heathrow (and a second at Stansted), a combination of the businesses lobby, airlines and elements of the Conservative party seeks to reopen the issue.

But is this politically possible? Labour’s shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle has reversed her party’s position saying: “The local environmental impact means that this is off the agenda.”

The Liberal Democrats, with seats to defend in south-west London, are hostile to Heathrow expansion, and for the Conservatives a sudden backtrack would cause embarrassing damage to their hard-won environmental credentials.

London First, a business lobbying group, has set up an independent Connectivity Commission, due to report in January, on how to develop “a national transport strategy that supports both London’s ability to remain competitive with other world cities and the UK’s long-term growth”.

Chief executive Baroness Valentine says: “Blocking the growth of London’s international air links won’t stop people flying from Paris or Frankfurt instead [and] a credible approach to solving the problem would be for the Government to revisit its aviation policy.”

The Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC) agrees. Its chief executive Anne Godfrey says: “Ultimately Heathrow will need to be both bigger and better should it wish to remain a leading European hub.

“The Government needs to balance far better the demands of the green lobby with the needs of UK businesses.

“Business organisations in general, and the business travel sector in particular, need to be more united in our argument for additional capacity.
She warns that business travellers can and have ‘voted with their feet’.

The GTMC’s 2010 survey of business travellers found 61.5% had taken a connecting flight through a non-UK airport in the previous year, 41.9% of them because they had no other way to reach their destination, a particular issue with South America and China.

Frankfurt has 47 flights per week to China, compared to Heathrow’s 30, the GTMC pointed out, and Paris has 48 flights per week to Brazil, compared to Heathrow’s 20.

Heathrow’s capacity problem means that if an airline wanted to serve a new destination it would have to drop an old one, a risk few are willing to take.

Godfrey adds: “Heathrow is losing out to other major European hubs whose additional runway capacity means they can offer a wider range of destinations in emerging markets.”

That is also the position of the Board of Airline Representatives in the UK (BAR UK), whose chief executive Mike Carrivick says: “While the UK dithers, other countries are grasping the economic opportunities offered by the lack of key hub airport capacity where it matters – London.

“If Heathrow expansion is off the menu, then what, where and when is the viable alternative, and who pays?”

Tory peer and donor Lord Glendonbrook, who as Michael Bishop was the former owner of carrier BMI, has joined this battle, stating: “There is a strong and sound – both environmental and economic – case to continue building at Heathrow.”

Another prominent Tory, London Assembly member, Victoria Borwick, has floated the idea of linking Heathrow and Gatwick by high-speed rail to form a single hub with the latter becoming a feeder for the former.

This thought was rubbished by Colin Stanbridge, chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said: “Business travellers want to transfer within the same airport they arrive at.”

Johnson has enthusiastically canvassed the Thames estuary airport idea as an outright replacement for Heathrow. This though provoked startlingly rude responses from Kent Tories.

A proposal from leading architect Lord Foster for an airport on the Isle of Grain drew this rebuke from Medway Council’s Tory leader Rodney Chambers: “This is, quite possibly, the daftest in a long list of pie-in-the-sky schemes.” He questioned whether Lord Foster had even troubled to visit the area.

Kent County Council’s Tory leader Paul Carter has called any estuary airport “undeliverable, unaffordable and unnecessary”, and the idea of closing Heathrow “ludicrous”.

Johnson cannot authorise projects outside London, but has said in a submission to the Department for Transport that Heathrow was “totally incapable of responding to the emergence of new business destinations in Asia and elsewhere…as well as rival continental hub airports”.

More capacity at Heathrow was “not an option as the local environmental consequences of growth are too great”, he added.

Carter’s alternative is to increase use of the large, and largely deserted, former military airport at Manston, but its remote location near Margate and poor transport links makes this unlikely.

Roger Hayes, director of Green Brain, a planning and public affairs consultancy that works with developers seeking planning permission, sees Heathrow expansion as highly problematic.

He says: “It is hard to see how, in the current climate, the business and airline lobby can do anything to change the nature of the political debate.

“They haven’t a hope of seeing a third runway or a sixth terminal, and Boris Johnson’s idea carries all the same objections, even if someone had the tens of billions of capital investment needed.

“What business and the airlines would need to do is mount a campaign on a hitherto unseen scale to show how constraint at Heathrow was damaging the regional and national economy, but even then they would face an almighty fight.”

Hayes thinks Heathrow expansion is off the table until such time as someone invents a quiet and non-polluting aircraft.

Expect the airlines and London businesses to put up a fight over this, but it might be time to consult timetables for other hubs.

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