NEWCASTLE Airport has been forced to scale back expansion plans because of the recession, MPs were told yesterday.

A plan to expand terminal facilities and build a 360- metre runway is now merely a “useful document”, it said.

The decision means the airport has abandoned its hopes of flying 9.5 million passengers by 2016, after the total fell by 612,000 to just over five million last year.

The news comes a month after BA rejected claims that its service from Newcastle to Heathrow could end.

In March, bmi cancelled its service from Durham Tees Valley Airport to Heathrow, although, as The Northern Echo revealed this week, Excelsis Airways hopes to revive a service within months.

Yesterday, in written evidence to the Transport Select Committee, Newcastle airport said: “The masterplan remains a useful document in setting out the way in which the airport is likely to expand in due course.

“But it now needs to be reviewed to reflect the current economic downturn and lower passenger growth expectations.”

The evidence, part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the future of aviation, criticised a range of Government policies, including: ● Planned increases to air passenger duty, on top of aviation’s inclusion in the EU carbon-trading scheme; ● The transfer of responsibility for policing and threat and risk analysis from police to the airport owner; ● A failure to invest in new roads, railways, airport terminals and runways, which meant the UK had “fallen behind its competitors”.

Newcastle Airport criticised climate change campaigners for the way aviation had “unfairly” been centrestage in the debate about the dangers of global warming.

And it rejected the suggestion that a high-speed rail link from London to the North – now backed by all political parties – could cut the demand for flights to Heathrow.

The airport employs nearly 3,500 people, supporting a further 5,000 jobs.