News: Coventry Airport public inquiry ends
Flights > News > # 853 (03/08/2006)
The inquiry into whether Coventry Airport should be allowed to build a new passenger terminal has ended after a marathon seven month battle between the airport and opposition including a local residents group and nearby Birmingham International.
The new terminal would only be able to cater for up to two million passengers a year, but Birmingham airport chiefs fear the growth of Coventry Airport would affect their own ambitious expansion plans.
Some residents living near the airport have also voiced concerns about air and noise pollution rising if the terminal was given the go ahead.
The results of the inquiry are expected early next year.
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Comment:
Somehow this public inquiry has managed to drag on even longer than the first public inquiry, which had to deal with the thorny issue of Coventry airport operating flights without securing planning permission for its temporary terminal. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money has been spent on seeing many of the same arguments recycled in front of the same inspector, so that the bullies at Birmingham International airport can have a bit of a whinge about their cheaper new competitor. Perhaps the biggest irony was last week's complaint by Birmingham airport's legal team that Coventry had resorted to bully boy tactics in its cross-examination of all of those “poor innocent witnesses” who had given evidence at the inquiry. Never mind the fact that almost all of those who gave evidence live in the affluent villages at the Warwickshire end of the runway.
What goes around comes around, so can we assume that when Birmingham's far more substantial expansion plans are put under the microscope, that they will invite all the local protestors around for tea and cakes, in the hope that they will come round to the airport's way of thinking? I very much doubt it.
