Heathrow’s runway approval is real this time — the financing question isn’t settled

Heathrow has cleared the approval it has chased, in one form or another, for a generation: enabling works for the northwest runway can begin. Three decades of white papers, commissions and legal challenges compress into a single planning consent.

The engineering is famous — a runway over the M25 — but the finance is the real test. Heathrow’s regulated asset base model means the cost lands, eventually, on airline charges, and its home carriers have spent years arguing the hub is already the world’s most expensive. Expect IAG to support the capacity and fight the bill, loudly, at the same time.

For the wider industry the signal matters more than the schedule: after years of European capacity retrenchment, the continent’s biggest hub is building again. Watch how Schiphol, Frankfurt and Paris respond in their next masterplan cycles.