'Boris Island' Sunk: London Mayor Blasts Airport Commission for Scuttling £80bn Thames Estuary Dream

Boris Johnson has said that he will continue to fight for an island airport in the Thames Estuary despite the fact that the Airports Commission deemed it a non-feasible option.

The leader of the Airports Commission, Sir Howard Davies, said that the Thames hub would be detrimental to the environment and too expensive with its £80bn price tag. The commission will now decide between expansion places at either Heathrow or Gatwick.

Johnson has vowed to keep fighting for so-called "Boris Island" however, claiming the decision to rule it out was short sighted.

The Mayor of London said: "In one myopic stroke the Airports Commission has set the debate back by half a century and consigned their work to the long list of vertically filed reports on aviation expansion that are gathering dust on a shelf in Whitehall.

"Gatwick is not a long term solution and Howard Davies must explain to the people of London how he can possibly envisage that an expansion of Heathrow, which would create unbelievable levels of noise, blight and pollution, is a better idea than a new airport to the east of London that he himself admits is visionary, and which would create the jobs and growth this country needs to remain competitive.

"It remains the only credible solution, any process that fails to include it renders itself pretty much irrelevant, and I'm absolutely certain that it is the option that will eventually be chosen."

Backers of the Thames Estuary island airport say that it would create 336,000 jobs and contribute £92bn to the UK economy by the year 2050, adding that it would "transform the south-east".