Philip Hammond announced the move at an Airport Operators Association conference, in his first formal address to a sector still angry that one of the government’s first acts was to ban new runways at the three biggest airports: Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.
"I know some of you harbour fears that this government is anti-aviation," Mr Hammond said, insisting this was not the case. But he quashed any notion the new study could lead to a change of policy over runways, telling the Financial Times in a subsequent interview that this was "the only clear restriction" on the scope of the review.
He was also cool on Boris Johnson’s plans for a Thames estuary airport, saying of the London mayor: "Devolution means he’s free to look at whatever he wants to look at, but it’s not something the department is pursuing."
He said aviation had to "decarbonise" and he hoped the review would lead to an understanding of how technological developments, such as aircraft made of lightweight composite materials, could eventually see aviation considered "a carbon good citizen".
As well as cracking down on airport expansion, the government has further vexed the industry by refusing to ditch contentious air passenger taxes, due to rise again to as much as £170 a ticket from Sunday. It is looking at plans to replace per-passenger duty with a per-plane tax, but, unlike other European Union governments, has shown no inclination to phase it out from 2012, when aviation is to be brought into the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).
Mr Hammond told the FT he accepted the ETS imposed a cost on the industry, but it "does not produce a correspondingly large benefit to the Treasury" and, at a time when there was a need to drive down the deficit, "aviation cannot be exempt from sharing and dealing with that problem".
Ed Anderson, chairman of the Airport Operators Association, delivered a robust critique of the government ahead of Mr Hammond’s speech, saying the industry knew the government was against a third runway at Heathrow and against aviation being lightly taxed, "but we are not sure yet what it is in favour of".
Referring to Mr Hammond’s oft-repeated comment that the government wanted "better not bigger" British airports, he said he thought this phrase was an "election slogan". "Better not bigger doesn’t constitute a strategy," he said.
Mr Anderson said later he thought Mr Hammond had been "positive" and he was pleased to hear about the policy review, "albeit over a longish time scale".
The review is the first since Labour published an air transport white paper in 2003. It will begin in the new year when the Department for Transport is to issue a "scoping document" setting out the questions to be answered in the study. This will be followed by discussion with relevant people in the industry, after which Mr Hammond said he hoped to publish a draft policy document for formal consultation early in 2012.