The airport owner wants to expand the existing terminal to 21.5m passengers, which is outside the DCO process. In consultation with the airport owner the airport operator puts in a planning application on behalf of the airport owner to add the first million of the airport owners plans for an additional 3.5m passengers, as it looks better to put in several smaller applications. Of course all of the additional flights will not add to the airports carbon footprint as they will be powered by elastic bands and everyone arriving at the airport will come in electric cars.
And who decides the planning application? Why it’s the airport owner. It seems to be a somewhat corrupt process devoid of independent scrutiny.