SOUTHAMPTON Airport has dismissed reports that it has plans to expand the size of its terminal in a push to double passenger numbers.

Airport manager Dave Lees confirmed that the airport is to review its masterplan later this year but no expansion plans have been agreed.

“It’s an exaggeration to say we will be doubling in size and we didn’t provide that information,” Mr Lees told the Echo.

Southampton is on the up and yesterday the Echo reported that the airport recorded two million passengers through the terminal in the year from April 2016 – making the last 12 months the busiest in the airport’s history.

However, the airport is nowhere near as busy as had been predicted by the existing master plan when it was drawn up in 2005.

Then it was envisaged that Southampton would be serving more than three million passengers a year by 2015 and figure that could rise to six million by 2030.

Mr Lees accepted that while business was growing it was not keeping pace with those predictions and that had been largely due to the global economic crash in 2008.

Now the airport was back on track it was the right time to update the masterplan, he said.

Mr Lees ruled out the need for another runway, pointing to the fact that Gatwick services 45 million passenger per year with a single runway.

However, the new masterplan, like the existing one, would consider the question of extending the runway, providing more check-in facilities and having new aircraft parking stands.

Mr Lees said that Southampton was well placed to grow as Heathrow and Gatwick reached full capacity.

He said there were one and a half million people living within 30 minutes of Southampton many of whom would like to fly from their local airport – especially for short haul flights.

“We’d like to see the airport expand but to what extent we don’t know yet,” said Mr Lees.

“We are optimistic about the future but we are not sure what the full impact of Brexit will be.”