A second study has been commissioned by Mayor of London Boris Johnson to look into the feasibility of building a major new airport somewhere in the Thames Estuary. A preliminary report has shown that it might be possible to construct a new airport but that it would be a challenge and would cost in the region of £40 billion. Although the second study is not due to be published until some time next summer the proposals already have conservationists and local authorities up in arms.

Rodney Chambers who sits on the Medway Council has said that a similar proposal for Cliffe in Kent had already been discounted because he claims that airlines said they had no interest in serving an airport so far away from the capital. He said that the new proposals would mean the building of a new airport even further away and could not understand why anyone should think that this would suddenly become interesting to those airlines.

Although the exact location of the new airport has not been agreed upon the initial proposals are that it would be linked to London and other areas by high speed rail links. The proposals that the airport should be built around a total of six runways has horrified the RSBP. Spokesman Andre Farrar said that the Thames Estuary played host to over half a million birds every year and that the building of an airport would mean the destruction of habitats such as the sands and mudflats on which they rely. He called the proposals an ecological disaster.