Britain’s government has backed a tortured effort to build a third runway at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, throwing its weight behind a decades-old proposal that has been beset by political, legal and environmental challenges.

London Heathrow could finally see a third runway, but even with Government approval, the project still has to undergo several steps before construction starts

Declaring that “growth will not come without a fight”, she said that the government would back airport expansion and offered more clues about plans to unshackle housebuilding. The Heathrow decision is the surest sign yet of the government prioritising growth,

British finance minister Rachel Reeves is expected to back the expansion of Heathrow Airport on Wednesday, turning to the country's most controversial infrastructure project in her hunt for economic growth.

In a major speech, the country’s top finance official pushed for faster economic growth, and supported a long-debated expansion at the London airport.

Rachel Reeves is facing fierce opposition within Labour over her plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

Chancellor’s optimistic economic growth vision hit in the short term as Tesco and Lloyds announce hundreds of job losses and she admits fixing the economy is ‘not an easy job’

A Virgin Atlantic aircraft, too, once managed to achieve high subsonic speed in 2019 on a flight from Los Angeles to London. With a strong tailwind, the aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, topped at 801 mph (1,289 km/h). The airline’s founder, Richard Branson, put out the following cheeky message on X (formerly known as Twitter).

In a major growth speech in Oxfordshire, Reeves said that a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport was "badly needed," adding it would boost investment, support economic expans

Heathrow's third runway can be built and operating in a decade's time, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said. Reeves told the BBC she wanted to see "spades in the ground" in the current Parliament and planes to start using the runway by 2035.

To justify air travel emissions ballooning in the meantime, the aviation sector has promised a mix of “supply-side” measures, like replacing kerosene with so-called “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF), which Reeves described as “a game changer”, and making planes lighter and more fuel-efficient.