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Four years ago, the government published a white paper on the future of air transport in the UK. With more people flying in and out of UK airports, the white paper put forward longer terms plans. The rport did say that there was an economic case for expanding London Heathrow Airport, but that numerous air pollution issues had to first be resolved. In the meantime, London Stansted was chosen as the airport to have the new runway. The government is also due to publish a document in October 2007 on the future of Heathrow and its expected to propose a third runway - and consequently more flights. BAA, owner of Heathrow and several of UK airports has started to lobby for a new long runway at Heathrow - with "long" being 4000 metres in length. This length of runway is needed for big, long haul planes. Both Heathrow's existing runways are long and in the past BAA have only proposed short runway which is suitable for short-haul flights. Its expected that any plans put forward by the government of BAA will be met with opposition by both environmentalists and local residents. The change from proposing a short length runway to now proposing a new long runway was suggested that if BAA need to go through the long process of getting a runway, they might as well try for a full-length runway as they are going to have a battle with local residents and environmentalists either way.