Over One Million Take to the Skies as Festive Flights Increase

London Luton Airport’s recent £15m design & build project recently completed in time to meet the increased winter footfall as the airport saw over one million passengers in November 2017 – marking a steady 44 months of consecutive growth.

RPS was appointed as Designer by Whitemountain Quarries Ltd to deliver the LOT 1 Landside Civil Engineering works project for the contract which was completed in summer 2017; and as Principal Designer by London Luton Airport Holdings directly.

London Luton Airport is one of six international airports serving the London area and is the UK’s fifth largest passenger airport currently used by 10 million passengers per annum. Landside Civil Engineering works, designed to improve access, circulation and parking facilities at the airport were required to support the airport expansion plans and to improve passenger facilities at the airport. The wider development strategy also includes improvements to airside facilities with the provision of new taxiways and the construction of a new multi storey car park to enable the Airport to expand capacity to 18 million passengers per annum.

The project involved the following:

• widening of the existing single carriageway airport access road to dual carriageway
• improvements to circulation and public transport areas adjacent to the Terminal including coach and taxi drop-off zones
• reconfiguration and rehabilitation of the Short-term car park and circulatory access route
• extension of the Mid-term car park
• provision of new goods-in access roads
• construction of a new enclosed pedestrian overbridge to provide safe access from car parks to the Terminal

A key objective of the project was to ensure all works were carried out whilst minimising disturbance to the everyday running of the airport and the movement of its staff and passengers. As a result, construction phasing and programing were critical and were carefully planned and monitored to minimise disturbance and ensure key milestones were consistently met.