The decision announced yesterday in the French press that a third airport would not be built in the Paris area is seen as good news for France’s second city, Lyon, and for Geneva as well.

Lyon is the capital city of the Rhône-Alpes Region, the second most important export and industrial region in France. Geneva is located 100 miles from Lyon at the eastern edge of the Rhône-Alpes Region.

With a shared language, history and heritage, Geneva has long-standing good relations with this region of France and the new bilateral agreements between the European Union and Switzerland mean that Geneva stands to gain even more from this important relationship.

Whilst, at first, it might seem that Geneva airport could suffer from an increasingly powerful airport just 100 miles to the west, this is most certainly not the case. Anything that enhances the economic importance and international accessibility of Central-Eastern France and Western Switzerland is to be welcomed by people on both sides of the border.

Geneva International Airport (GVA) currently handles 8 million passengers whilst Lyon Saint Exupéry (LYS) handles around 6 million. However, GVA can only expand so far due to the topographical limitations of Geneva and should reach passenger saturation by around 2015 in its present form. On the other hand, LYS is located in a broad plain in the heart of France that could allow the present two runways to be extended to four runways offering unrivalled capacity for future growth.

Already, there is close collaboration among French and Swiss airports to assure harmonious and mutually-beneficial development. One of the most dramatic developments on the drawing board is the revolutionary underground high-speed SwissMetro concept to link the two airports.

A feasibility study has already been completed and with new funding and a new consortium behind the project this year, one could well see a GVA-LYS high-speed link taking only 15 minutes to whisk passengers and freight between the airports. There’s a long way to go but Geneva and neighbouring France are no strangers to major international projects. There is CERN, the largest pan-European project ever, and now the ‘Golden Rectangle, currently the largest trans-border construction project in Europe.

There is another important distinction. Geneva is a ‘destination’ airport with few transit passengers whilst Lyon, like Zurich, will have a much higher transit passenger ratio. The combination of four runways a short transfer time from Geneva would give a major boost to international air carrier potential.

All in all, this unexpected but welcome about-face on the part of the French authorities is a particularly encouraging development that will see considerable efforts on the part of Rhône-Alpes and Lyon to ensure it is implemented.