Stansted growth will mean more cheap flights

The number of cheap flights leaving from Stansted is likely to increase, after the airport submitted a planning application to increase flights by around 23,000 per year.

Stansted's Generation 1 plan would see the number of flights in and out of the airport, termed air transport movements (ATMs), rise by up to 63 per day.

Generation 1 is separate from a plan to build a second runway and focuses solely on maximising the flights using the existing runway.

At present the airport is limited to operating 241,000 ATMs per annum, under limits imposed in 2003, which also restrict passenger numbers to 25 million per year.

Stansted is the third-busiest airport in the UK and currently serves more than 22 million passengers a year. It is growing quickly and believes that its planning condition limit of 25 million will be reached in 2008.

Stansted's business development and planning director, Nick Barton, said the plan was the result of "two years of extensive and wide-ranging studies and consultation on our proposals".

He emphasised the airport's intention "to make full use of [the] existing single runway to keep pace with demand for increased business and leisure travel and to support the growing economies of the east of England and London".

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