Boris warns of ‘economic catastrophe’ over airports

He described the Government as paying “lamentable attention” to the pressing issue of more airport capacity.

And Mr Johnson said a third runway at Heathrow Airport was not the answer and what was needed was a four-runway airport, possibly in the Thames Estuary or at Stansted Airport in Essex.

The Government has appointed former Financial Services Authority chief Sir Howard Davies to lead an independent commission into airport capacity needs.

But his final report is not due until summer 2015 – after the next general election.

Addressing business leaders in London yesterday, Mr Johnson said the Davies timetable was “far too slow” and that the “continued inertia” was being fully exploited by the UK’s European rivals.

Mr Johnson said: “The Government programme to address the looming aviation capacity crunch in the UK is far too slow and I am hugely concerned that their intended timetable sets a course for economic catastrophe. This continued inertia is being fully exploited by our European rivals who already possess mega hub airports that they intend to use to erode our advantage.”

He added: “I will continue to work with the Government and the Davies Commission, but the urgency of the situation and the lamentable attention that the Government has paid to this pressing issue has forced me to accelerate the work that I will do to develop a credible solution.”

Mr Johnson said a third runway at Heathrow – believed by some to be the Tories’ eventual plan –would only be an interim solution.

He added that the scale of the location required – accommodating at least four runways – meant that several locations, constrained by available land, had to be ruled out. These included the existing airports at Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham and Luton.

Mr Johnson said the total cost of building a hub airport handling 180 million passengers a year was estimated at £75bn to £80bn.

He said the earliest a third runway could be completed at Heathrow would be around 2026-28, only two to four years quicker than a new hub airport.

Mr Johnson added that even if the Government was “mad” and decided to go ahead with a third Heathrow runway it would be imposing on people “an environmental and political disaster which would be obsolete as soon as it was completed”.

Mr Johnson would not go into details about what he and David Cameron discussed last weekend when he visited the Prime Minister at Chequers.

But he did say: “I believe David Cameron is going to win the next general election.

“The Government are doing the right thing for the economy and are doing what the country needs them to do.”

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