GOVERNMENT ministers have been urged to ignore "entirely misguided" pleas to expand Gatwick over Heathrow.

Sir Howard Davies, the head of the Airports Commission, addressed secretary of state for transport Patrick McLoughlin over criticisms by Gatwick bosses regarding his report.

Earlier this year he Sir Howard recommended the government back the expansion of Heathrow over Gatwick

He said some of the claims made by Gatwick after the report were "nonsense".

He added: "The majority of the points made by Gatwick in the media were in reality also made to the commission in the course of its work and we considered them carefully before we reached our conclusions. I thought it may therefore be helpful to provide an overview of this and to explain why we believe strongly that our work is robust to these criticisms.

"We strongly disagree with the Gatwick’s view that the commission’s forecasts underestimate the level of passenger growth that would be seen at an expanded Gatwick and overestimate growth at an expanded Heathrow. Even so, we have always acknowledged the risks associated with long term forecasting. That is why we developed a scenario based methodology, which enabled us to understand the implications for our analysis of different views of the future."

He also said Gatwick's passenger growth was "unusual" with the average growth between 2004 and 2014 less than 700,000 a year.

He said: "As a result, it is reasonable to assume a high level of suppressed demand for runway slots. The willingness of airlines, most recently Vietnam Airways, to switch from Gatwick to Heathrow as soon as slots become available bears this out."

Gatwick's argument that lower costs of expansion would filter through as "lower per passenger" charges was "entirely misguided," he said and rebuffed the airport's challenge of the commission's determinations on air quality.

He added: "Gatwick accuse the commission of having 'largely ignored' its lower noise impacts compared to Heathrow. That is nonsense. We have been aware from an early stage of our work of Gatwick's relative advantage in respect of noise impacts."

He also wrote to the London Assembly - the elected body that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor of London.

Both letters were published on the Airport Commission's website yesterday.