Maplin: the Treasury and London’s third airport in the 1970s

Debate in the 1970s about London’s third airport offers interesting parallels for today’s policy makers grappling with the need to increase airport capacity. Like ‘Boris Island,’ the proposed Thames estuary airport, Maplin Sands, was abandoned in 1974. Dr Duncan Needham, of Cambridge University, considers the many factors in this decision and suggests that the solution today may be hiding in plain sight.