Cheapflights welcomes Heathrow third runway decision

January 15 2009: London: Cheapflights Ltd., the pioneer of and an international leader of independent online flight price search and comparison welcomes the Government's decision to allow a third runway for Heathrow.

Heathrow is the world’s busiest international airport and is currently running at an untenable 99% capacity. As an island nation, the UK depends on efficient overseas transport links for both business and leisure.

Cheapflights.co.uk therefore welcomes this strategic travel infrastructure investment which is vital to the UK's future economic well-being.

The additional runway brings with it the prospect of lower fares, more consumer choice, and the ability of Heathrow better to compete with European competitors such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris.

Increasing Heathrow’s capacity, especially in today's global financial environment, will also help preserve approximately 600,000 UK jobs that aviation now directly and indirectly supports – a vital resuscitation of the UK’s faltering economy.

Aviation is a growing global industry. Adding a third runway at Heathrow will enable the UK to keep pace with growing European and International air travel. A healthier air travel industry will further stimulate the development of more fuel efficient and quieter aircraft.

Cheapflights' CEO Chris Cuddy commented: "Cheapflights lauds the Government’s decision to back a third runway at Heathrow. The UK’s pre-eminence as an economic European hub is dependent on sufficient capacity to meet existing and future demand and also competition from its European rivals.

Furthermore blocking expansion would not have helped reduce climate change. It would have merely diverted the increased international air traffic to European airports, many of which are actively increasing runway capacity, and thereby significantly reduced Heathrow's importance as an international hub.

Increased landing & take-off capacity will be a win-win situation for the flying public, and the economies of the UK and beyond. A healthier UK travel infrastructure will boost the engine of international commerce.

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Contact:

Cheapflights Ltd:

John Barrington-Carver; Corporate PR Tel: +44 (0) 207 467 3535 Mobile +44 (0) 7831 655 630

e-mail: corporate-pr@cheapflights.com

Notes to Editors

Cheapflights Ltd.: www.cheapflights.co.uk was launched in 1996. It pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison and has been consistently profitable since launch. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000, which helped to transform online advertising.

Cheapflights does not sell tickets but publishes flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers.

It launched its US site www.cheapflights.com in May 2003, which has rapidly grown and which now provides half of Cheapflights' millions of monthly visits by consumers. Its Canadian site www.cheapflights.ca which was "Light" launched in April 2007 is already enjoying traffic of more than 250,000 monthly visits.

The first non-English language site www.cheapflug.de was "light" launched in Germany in October 2008. Cheapflights' main European and North American sites each provide consumers with rapid, easy to use comparisons of about 1 million flight deals daily from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The sites are valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site, together with its free opt-in subscriber newsletters makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information on both sides of the Atlantic.

Comments

[Anders Griffiths]

Shame on you "cheapflights" for backing the plans for the 3rd runway at heathrow, clearly you don't care about all the people who will lose their homes and will get very little in return. I for one will no longer be visiting you're website again.

[Cheapflights News Team]

Thanks for your comment about the runway at Heathrow. At Cheapflights, we do believe that the benefits of the proposed runway will outweigh the negative effects, though we appreciate that many others hold different views.

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