Airports Commission report: Five things you can get for the same price as Sir Howard Davies’ report cost
The long-awaited, much-delayed Airports Commission report is finally here.
It's been a three-year slog, it's cost millions – and, well, it hasn't resolved very much at all yet. Sir Howard Davies and his team settled on Heathrow as the frontrunner, but that doesn't mean a new runway is going to happen.
The final cost of the report is estimated to have cost between £15m and £20m, with little to show for it. Here are five other ways that cash could have been spent.
1. A small plane
This Embraer 190 plane, used by British Airways, comes with a £20m price tag.
2. Millions of even smaller planes
2.6m models of a BA Boeing 787 to be exact, more than enough for every single person in Birmingham – a snip, at £7.67 a pop.
3. Thousands of round the world trips
The cost of the report equates to 15,167 round the world flights – but that's a lot for one person. Based on the price of a round the world ticket costing just under £1,000, that’s a nice holiday – flights only – for roughly the population of Saffron Walden in Essex.
4. A mansion
Right on budget, this Notting Hill property will boast 10 bedrooms once the buyer's knocked the two semis into one.
If that £15m had been invested in a property in Kensington back in 2012 though, the government would have made a tidy £3m considering prices have risen in the area more than 20 per cent since 2012, according to Zoopla.
5. Apple
Not all of Apple of course, but if the government had instead invested in Apple stock back in 2012, it would have made £9.6m, considering shares in the tech giant have risen more than 60 per cent since 2012.
Whether this would have been money better spent remains to be seen.