AN INTERNATIONAL airport on the banks of the Severn Estuary in Gwent is not needed and would not find private investment to get it built.

This is the view of Jon Horne, managing director of Cardiff International Airport, which last week announced that it had attracted a low-cost airline to operate from South Wales for the first time.

The Severnside International Airport company has plans for a multi-million-pound Class A airport on land south-east of Llanwern steelworks and west of the Second Severn Crossing.

As a base for long-haul flights to the Americas and the Far East, as well as traditional European destinations, it would create tens of thousands of jobs and transform life for miles around in Gwent.

Three weeks ago the government, which is aiming to publish a White Paper on the future of air transport in Britain, confirmed that it had included Severnside as an option if it decided to create international airport facilities outside London.

The Severnside Company and its driving force, Bath developer Peter Charles-Greed, are cock-a-hoop, but Mr Horne and the fast-growing Cardiff International are sceptical.

"There's a whole range of issues here," Mr Horne said. "I cannot find any detail that describes the proposal, and one of the first things that strikes me is the determination of whether or not it is needed. This would be the first step and I cannot find that need.

"If you look at volumes of travel generated within the South Wales catchment area and what you might do to attract people from England, to suddenly create something that is another Manchester or Birmingham overnight from scratch is almost impossible to contemplate.

"You are talking about enormous sums of money. Where is it going to come from? Government thinking has been that the private sector pays for airport development, and I cannot see anyone paying out the sums of money necessary on a speculative basis to create such an airport when you have Cardiff and Bristol in relative proximity and catering for demand."