Daniel Moyland flies to defence of 'Boris Island' airport "The only way you'd make if financially successful is say you're going to build it and, as part of that, you're going to close Heathrow," Walsh said earlier this year, noting that otherwise "we're going to stay at Heathrow." Moylan disagrees, dismissing Walsh as a "stuck in the mud." "I don't think Heathrow needs to close," he says. I think Heathrow will have a future as a smaller point-to-point airport serving the West London and Home Counties premium leisure market - people going on holiday who don't want to fly from Luton at 3am. Neither does he have any truck with Walsh's insistence that, given choice, BA would stay put. "It requires only an ounce of imagination and a pound of inducement and you will have BA in the new airport," he says. In the "right financial circumstances," BA would jump at the chance, he believes, to have a new airport "designed to a large extent around them." How, though, do you get there? Articulating that is the challenge for Moylan, who stepped down last month as chairman of the London Legacy Development Corporation dealing with the aftermath of the Olympics to focus on the Mayor's submission to the hub airport review being led by former Financial Services Authority chairman, Sir Howard Davies. Moylan, who has already produced two airport studies for the Mayor, admits he started off "with a degree of scepticism" over whether Britain even needed a hub airport, where all the transfer passengers spend is the "price of a cup of tea." But now he thinks that's just "wrong." Like BA and BAA, he believes that by "getting all the passengers together in one place," you increase both the number of routes and frequency. "The hub prospect is one that's attracted hundreds of millions of pounds of investment from people with their heads screwed on," says Moylan, citing those hubs at Dubai, Schiphol and Dallas Fort Worth. When I first started working for Boris four years ago, everyone was talking about a world city. It's only when I got into aviation that I realised it does really mean something. You are one of those cities that is connected directly to the other world cities. It's like being on a fast conveyor belt. London needs to be part of that. We can't be a branch station at the end of a country line - not if we are going to attract the global headquarters and the high-quality jobs they bring. That's why, he says, a third runway at Heathrow is a waste of money. Heathrow can't be the four-plus runway airport the country needs. It's a constrained site - two and half runways max because the third would only be a short one. For that you've already got to demolish Sipson village. To make Heathrow any bigger you would have to start knocking serious amounts of property down. Others beg to differ. Last week a report by Policy Exchange championed a four-runway airport at Heathrow, developed on land to the west of the present site. Moylan's alternative is the Mayor's £50bn hub in the east - which brings "regenerative advantages" - and his own plan for a "10 or 15-year transition" for Heathrow. The economy does change and locations of jobs do change. It's not a zero-sum game. If you have more jobs in aviation to the east of London you won't necessarily have fewer to the west. We're not throwing tens of thousands of people out of their jobs overnight. We are talking about a growth sector and we want to facilitate that growth. Stressing that similar transitions from old to new airports have been made in Munich, Thailand and Hong Kong, among others, Moylan outlines a "speculative" scenario. Broadly, it would involve shrinking Heathrow from today's 70 million passengers a year to around 20 million, redeveloping part of the airport and compensating BAA and some airlines for relocating the traffic. Proceeds from redevelopment and an interim hike in Heathrow's landing charges would go some way to funding the new hub, whose costs, says Moylan, are evenly split between "£25bn for building the new airport and £25bn for the road and rail links." If Heathrow were a smaller airport that could potentially operate with one runway and fewer terminal facilities, then part of the site becomes available for development - not residential but commercial. With the regulator's permission, Moylan would also try the same funding approach pioneered elsewhere. "They continue to put up the landing charges as if the investment in the old airport is still continuing but won't actually be happening," he says. So we snaffle the money from that to help fund the new airport. The crucial difference, though, is that Heathrow is privately-owned, with a regulated asset base - the regulator's proxy for its value - of almost £15bn. Wouldn't BAA want compensation up front? "That's one possibility," says Moylan. I don't know whether it's £10bn or £15bn. They're your figures, though I'm not disputing what you say particularly. A commercial negotiation has to take place. You might have to buy it outright. You might say carry on earning a return over a period and we'll buy it from you at the end. Or maybe we give you something else like a stake in the new airport. Moylan continues: "BAA is not the only party in this. Clearly there are some costs to the airlines of moving, though these are not necessarily cash. They could be discounts on landing charges. Add it all up and that looks like a £70bn new airport. Moylan won't talk numbers but admits: "I have never said a new airport can be built without public funds. I think roads and rail connections will probably have to be paid for by the public sector but they are not just for the airport - they are opening up the economy of south-east England. Unlike railways, "airports are profitable," he stresses. There will be private sector interest as long as there is political commitment. Suggest that, conservatively, the taxpayer will be in for at least £30bn and Moylan shoots back: "£2bn a year on the transport budget over 15 years is perfectly do-able. The fact is the airport will only get built if the Government makes it their policy. Our job is to get the Government to take it seriously and make it their policy. That will unlock the resources. The way of the world is you can make it happen if you want to make it happen.