An Extra Runway At Heathrow

Letters on an extra runway at Heathrow:

Will Hutton is wrong to claim that air travel has been democratised ("Travel is vital to halt prejudice", Focus, last week). Seventy five per cent of budget airline flights are taken by social classes A, B and C, while people in classes D and E occupy just 6% of all available seats ... Hutton wants more "mobility and modernity" - in the face of the evidence that all it achieves is harm to the global poor and vulnerable.

Prof Andrew Dobson
School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Keele University

[SR - Andy was the 2005 Green Party candidate in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and came close to winning a seat in 2006 local elections]

Will Hutton thinks aviation should be encouraged because it will break down barriers and halt prejudice. Would such barriers and prejudice be lesser or greater in his globally warmed world, where hundreds of millions attempt to migrate from inundated low-lying lands to areas of heat and water stress, where agriculture is also in collapse? We all know the answer to that - humans have always fought to the death over limited resources and, if he gets his way, will do so in unprecedented scale in the future.

Jon Fuller
Essex