The UK aviation regulator has partially rejected plans by Heathrow to significantly raise its landing fees to fund a multibillion-pound upgrade, arguing the airport can still invest without steep rises to ticket prices.

The Civil Aviation Authority said the average charge for each passenger should rise from £28.40 to £28.80 between 2027 and 2031.

Last year, Heathrow proposed a 17% increase to £33.26, which resulted in criticism from airlines who said it would lead to higher ticket prices for passengers.

The CAA said its average passenger charge would instead rise by 1%. That increase is £5.40, or 16%, lower than the changes proposed by Heathrow but significantly higher – £5.80 or 25% – than the changes wanted by the airlines.

Selina Chadha, group director of consumer markets at the CAA, said: “Our primary duty is to protect consumers and at the heart of today’s proposals is doing the right thing for passengers using Heathrow airport, while supporting sustainable growth, investment, and efficiency.

“Our proposals for the airport charges levied by Heathrow on airlines strike the right balance between keeping passenger prices fair, while enabling the airport to make the investment needed to improve services for the future.”

In its initial plans published on Tuesday, the CAA proposed Heathrow spend between £5.4bn and £6.1bn on projects including upgrading the airport’s electrical system. Last year, Heathrow was forced to close after a fire at a nearby electricity substation caused a power cut, resulting in the cancellation of more than 1,300 flights.

Europe’s busiest airport had been seeking approval to spend up to £10bn to handle an extra 10 million passengers a year by 2031, with upgrades including a plan to modernise Terminal 5.

Thomas Woldbye, the chief executive of Heathrow airport, said: “We will now review the CAA’s initial proposal in detail to fully understand the implications for delivering the innovation, progress and improvements customers expect.

“On the face of it, the CAA’s proposal may force choices that create trade-offs for service and delay delivery.”

The CAA will publish its final proposals in November, which do not include its plans for a third runway, with a final decision expected in April 2027.

In 2023, Heathrow was forced to cut passenger charges by almost a fifth after losing an appeal to the UK competition watchdog against the CAA.

The four-day bank holiday weekend is expected to be the busiest Easter on the roads in four years, despite a surge in fuel prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East.

Drivers are planning nearly 21m leisure journeys between Thursday and Easter Monday, according to a study by the RAC and the traffic analytics specialists Inrix.

With more than 1m additional trips planned compared with last year, this Easter is set to be the busiest on the roads since 2022, which was the first full getaway after the Covid lockdowns ended. And signs that the weather could warm up in time for the weekend mean the number of ad hoc journeys could rise, the RAC said.

The AA predicted that traffic during the Easter period would peak on Thursday, when many schools break up. Just over half of people expect to travel short distances of under 50 miles. About one in five plan to visit friends and family, one in 10 want to head outdoors for walking or cycling, and 5% expect to visit DIY stores or garden centres.

Lee Morley, an AA expert patrol, said: “After what feels like a very long, wet winter, lots of families are looking forward to the Easter break.”

With better weather forecast, routes to the coast are likely to be especially busy, as well as roads around town and city centres and retail parks.

Network Rail has alerted travellers to “lots of planned essential engineering works and upgrades” over the bank holiday weekend, which is likely to increase road traffic. Engineers will work on more than 270 upgrade projects across Britain over Easter.

The Association of British Travel Agents said most of those whose trips had been affected by the war had switched to alternative destinations including the western Mediterranean, Caribbean, and direct-flight long-haul trips to Thailand and South Africa.

The RAC said nearly a third of drivers (31%) were increasingly worried about higher fuel costs since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on 28 February.

With the price of crude oil soaring above $100 a barrel, the average price of petrol in the UK has risen above 150p a litre for the first time since May 2024, according to the RAC.

Filling up a 55-litre family car with diesel this Easter will cost at least £19 more than it did on Good Friday last year, while a tank of petrol will be almost £8 more, with further increases likely.

Even so, most people are not changing their travel plans: only 6% expect to drive shorter distances and another 6% say they will not drive at all because of the higher prices, according to the RAC.

The RAC’s Sean Kimberlin said: “Despite fuel prices rising dramatically due to the conflict in the Middle East, our research suggests Easter remains incredibly important to people as it’s often the first chance to get away since Christmas or to meet up with friends and family.”

The port of Dover estimates 37,000 cars will travel through the port during the Easter holidays between this Thursday and Sunday 19 April.

The port’s chief executive, Doug Bannister, said: “The port is preparing for a busy Easter getaway period, with an early increase in traffic expected from [last] Friday, followed by the predicted getaway volumes through to mid-April.”

Heathrow airport has revealed a crowding problem that a third runway cannot solve: British and foreign travellers walk on different sides, and keep colliding, according to its chief executive.

Thomas Woldbye said that while Heathrow serviced more passengers in a smaller overall area than comparable European hubs, part of the London airport’s trouble was the differing continental sense of direction.

Speaking at an industry event, the Danish boss said one reason people thought Terminal 5, the main terminal used by British Airways, was crowded was that people were “in the wrong place”.

In comments to the Aviation Club UK, he said: “The problem is that all the British people keep to the left and normally Europeans keep to the right. And they do that in both directions.

“So we can be crashing into each other, and I see that from personal experience.”

Woldbye said that while “I have jokes with our people”, it was an issue that could be changed. “We just need to make sure that everybody going this way keeps to the left and this way to the right. I know that’s simplified but that is the sort of thinking that we need,” he said.

Heathrow will build more satellite terminals should it succeed with plans for a third runway, which could add about 40 million extra passengers of varying directional preferences to the mix. The 240,000 extra flights a year will be guided by air traffic control.

Woldbye said even with expansion, backed by the government, rival international hubs would grow faster than Heathrow. “London will lose market share every single year for the next 10 years. I think that should be a serious concern,” he said.

Meanwhile, the airport is attempting to address concerns that a third runway is incompatible with the UK’s 2050 net zero goals by accelerating the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

It has established an £80m pot – paid from landing charges – to subsidise airlines that choose to use more SAF on top of the minimum required under national mandates.

The mix of aviation fuel in the UK must average at least 3.6% SAF over the course of 2026, but Heathrow expects to hit a self-imposed target of 5.6%, helping airlines to cover some of the additional cost of the more expensive cleaner fuel.

Planes running on SAF – so far largely produced from recycled cooking oil – emit equal amounts of CO2 in flight as those using fossil fuels, but the net carbon footprint is calculated as lower because of the “life cycle”, ie how it is produced compared with normal jet fuel. SAF is regarded as a potential solution to significantly decarbonise long-haul aviation, although many remain sceptical.

Matt Gorman, Heathrow’s director of sustainability, said: “We have looked to use our scale and influence to attract SAF and we’ve shown you can get SAF flowing. The next challenge is stimulating domestic production – from a carbon, but also a energy security and growth perspective.”

Duncan McCourt, the chief executive of industry group Sustainable Aviation, said government pledges to start building five UK fuel plants by 2025 had been “optimistic”, with none yet under construction, but added they were making progress. “There is a real economic growth opportunity, for tens of thousands of jobs in the UK by 2050,” McCourt said.

Provisional figures published this week showed that the 2025 supply met the UK’s first annual fuel mandate of 2% SAF, with high uptake in the final months of the year after fears that the industry would miss the target.