Britain | Air cargo

The freight debate

Another argument for expanding Heathrow

AT 10.30pm, as the day’s final flights depart from Heathrow, a packing team at DHL Express is hard at work. Two of the delivery firm’s distinctive yellow and red aeroplanes heave with containers full of boxes and envelopes for delivery across Europe the next day. Air freight is a little noticed branch of the airline industry, but an important part of the argument for Heathrow’s expansion.

Each year 70m people travel through Heathrow, making it the world’s third-busiest passenger airport after Atlanta and Beijing. It is also Britain’s busiest for freight, with everything from flowers to racehorses packed into the holds of passenger aircraft and a few dedicated freight planes. Last year goods worth £133 billion ($210 billion) were ferried through Heathrow, more than the combined value of goods passing through Felixstowe and Southampton, Britain’s biggest container ports.

Air freight fell during the recession and has only recovered slowly. But the volume going through Heathrow increased by 11% between 2009 and 2013 (although it has dipped recently). And parts of the market are doing well: last year express air freight grew by 6% globally.

Freight companies like using Heathrow because large logistics firms and warehouses have sprung up around its edges, and it is also near motorways which connect up to huge distribution centres in the Midlands. And Heathrow has lots of flights to far-flung places; more so than Gatwick, its rival for expansion in the south-east. “We want to go where business passengers want to go,” says Danny Pedri of DHL. “We don’t want to go to the Maldives.”

But Heathrow, for freight as for passengers, is full to bursting point. “We have no capacity to take on new destinations,” says Brian Green of the Airline Operators Committee for Cargo, an industry group at Heathrow. Without new flights, Britain’s air-freight market risks losing out on establishing more links with countries in, for example, Asia. And popular aircraft such as the A380 have slightly less room for freight as they pack in more passengers, who in turn are more valuable to airports peddling duty-free goods.

This means that many freight companies may go elsewhere in Europe, potentially reducing the ability of British businesses to ship their goods speedily to so many places around the world. As space becomes ever tighter, the cost of shipping air freight will increase. Already Heathrow lags far behind Hong Kong, as well as other European airports such as Paris and Frankfurt (see chart). Unless the airport gets another runway, it is unlikely that it will be able to catch up.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "The freight debate"

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