London City Airport has been booming the last few years. Located just to the east of the center of London, the airport that opened in the 1980’s has taken advantage of being located near the Docklands financial district. This puts corporate clients a mere 15 minutes away from the airport terminal. However, clouds are forming on the horizon against the airports future. A recent expansion plan was blocked, the airport is up for sale, and the largest air operator British Airways has threatened to cut all of its flights if a new owner raises costs. A city development program that proposed expanding the terminal to add additional capacity at the airport was passed. The Borough of Newham then approved the plan in January of 2015, but it was blocked the following February by London mayor Boris Johnson. On top of all this drama, the US based airport owner, Global Infrastructure Partners, put the property up for sale last summer for £2 billion ($2.9 billion). This caused British Airways to promptly announce that it would pull all its flights out of the airport if any new owner were to increase the costs of its operations. The airport has a short single runway of just 4327 foot for operations, and flights are limited to smaller regional propliners and jets due to its length. British Airways does operate an all business class Airbus A318 from from the airport to New York City (JFK), and CityJet plans to add service using the Russian built Sukhoi SuperJet 100 aircraft it has on order.
