Re: Aviation White Paper Disaster - Government assumptions set to waste billions
It's an interesting debate, and it's true that some of the assumptions made in the White Paper can already be seen as wide of the mark, but I don't see that any extra infrastrusture will be built if the investors (who will pay for this infrastructure) feel that the return will be inadequate. The Government's belief that expansion will be beneficial is not enough to persuade hard-nosed financial institutions to back it if they don't see a clear return.
Aviation is expanding, right now, at something like 5% annually in UK. That expansion is fuelled by the efforts of the low-cost sector, who have placed orders for sufficient aircraft to allow that expansion to continue for some years yet. Inevitably, that expansion will be limited by infrastructure capacity unless some increase in that capacity is created. How much increased capacity will be required is the question which this White Paper attempted to answer, and I think the authors were acutely aware that previous aviation expansion predictions were well below what actually occurred. Therefore, I think that the White Paper's predictions can be taken as being on the generous side!
What the White Paper did not tackle was whether Governments should enable all the capacity increases the industry would like; there seems to have been relatively little debate within the Government along the lines that road-building has generated, and where a conscious and deliberate policy of restricting capacity has been adopted. Such a policy for aviation may well come to pass in the medium term, I suspect.
As for the effects of oil (prices and production) on aviation expansion are concerned, high oil prices will slow growth but will increase investment in alternative aviation fuels research - which is already well advanced. The aeroplanes being produced today will still be flying in 40 years time - though they may not have as many runways as the White Paper predicts!